


fight less, talk more, say sorry sometimes

by Kitisonfire



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But only a little, Chewie stop laughing it isn't funny, Co-Dependency, Dark, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional Reliance, F/M, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost(s), Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Gray Jedi, Han Solo Lives, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Slavery, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, It does get better, Kes adopts Finn and Rey, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren is Not Redeemed, Leia being a badass, Luke Skywalker actually takes responsibility, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Misunderstandings, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Please stop stealing the Millennium Falcon, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Politics, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Poe Dameron, Rey accidentally sort of steals Finn from the First Order, Rey learns about the Force through recordings of Cal, Spice Runner Poe Dameron, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Spoilers, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Tags May Change, That's Not How The Force Works, The Trio Deserve Happiness, Torture, Trust Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, and is done with everyone's shit, and takes the galaxy by storm, he's so proud of his baby badasses, let the creative liberties guide you, obviously, she leaves Jakku early, the First Order are a little more subtle about taking over the galaxy, they all need a hug honestly, time dilation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22996657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kitisonfire/pseuds/Kitisonfire
Summary: You don't have to be someone to save the galaxy. You don't have to be perfect. You don't even have to be good.All you have to do is care enough to try.Rey is eight when she finds BD-1 among the wrecks on Jakku, hidden and damaged and missing his memory of the last thirty seven years. There's nothing she can do to help. Not while she still has to wait for her parents to come back.But when BD-1 shows her Cal Kestis, a Jedi Knight with the same power she's been hiding all her life, Rey realises finding her way home has just become a lot more complicated. And, soon, she's going to have torun.It's a good thing she knows all about the Skywalkers or she might have forgotten to drag the rest of the galaxy along with her.(In which Rey learns the dark isn't always where the monsters hide, Finn learns having a choice means nothing if he doesn't use it, and Poe learns the cost of forgiveness isn't really that high after all.)
Relationships: BB-8 & Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey, BD-1 & Rey, Cal Kestis & Rey, Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Han Solo & Everyone, Kes Dameron & Finn, Kes Dameron & Poe Dameron, Kes Dameron & Rey, Leia Organa & Everyone, Luke Skywalker & Everyone, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey, Zorii Bliss & Poe Dameron
Comments: 55
Kudos: 120





	1. Do You Ponder the Manner of Things?

“Catch her!”

“C’mere, you little– _ow_ , you little _shit_ –”

She’s abandoned aged five.

“Kriff, get a hold of her, will you?”

“I’m _trying_ —girl! Girl, get the fuck back here. Hey!”

“Don’t let her get away!”

She’s abandoned aged five, except she doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know anything except for the voice, tucked in behind her thoughts, and that it’s always been there. It’s the only thing that matters.

That doesn’t get better.

“Girl, _girl!_ ”

“Whoa, watch it–“

“You’re gonna _damage_ her—“

She claws at the fingers that tear through her hair, yanking as the yells echo back and forth across the sand into her head, broken down to meaningless noise. Nails bury into her skin and she twists and slams the body back against a wall, choking her cry of pain as a fistful of hair is ripped free of her scalp, and she scrambles back to her feet as her attacker lurches forward with outstretched hands.

She’s wrestled to the ground amidst her own guttural screams and snarls of anger, of fear, of despair she doesn’t understand, just knows that it’s _there_ , aching and cracked and bleeding until there isn’t anything left to find

 _Run,_ the voice wails, drowning out reality. _Run run run run run you have to run keep me hidden keep me secret keep me safe keep me here until nobody finds me they can’t find me they’re waiting in the dark there are monsters little girl and you have to run run run before before before before–_

 _Don’t think about it_.

She screams and wails and cries.

But she does not think about it.

—

They say her parents are gone. They don’t know where to and she doesn’t know why, and they tell her it doesn’t matter anyway because she belongs to someone else now. She sits in a dingy, dust-soaked tent, shackled to a post, alone except for when they come to take her blood and examine her body and leave water. They poke and prod and hum and haw and ask questions she doesn’t know the answers to, and then they leave her alone.

So alone.

Always alone.

They walk in to find she’s dumped the water into the sand and has her ear pressed to the bowl, whole body curled around it, fingers trembling and slick with blood where she’s scratched the skin on her arms to pieces.

“Why did you do that?” they ask.

She shakes her head. The voice answers for her. “It’s wrong. It’s wrong it’s wrong it’s all _wrong_.”

“Great. She’s actually fucking mad.”

“Ah, don’t panic, Plutt doesn’t need her sane. He just needs her to work.”

“I sure as shit ain’t going near her again.”

“She’s a little girl, what d’you expect her to…”

The words fade, lost in the dents and imprints in the bowl that spread from stone to thought. She sees a woman sobbing, clutching her belly; a teenager curled in silent resignation, a fresh brand on his back; a xeno twitching on the ground, gasping great heaving breaths, and—

And—

And—

And—

 _And_ —

The bowl always just out of reach.

—

Her mind is a strange place to be in.

She remembers terror and loss and loneliness, remembers rushing forward—or maybe backward?—because that _need,_ tattooed into her sinews and muscles and bones, was the only thing she could understand. It takes days for the wounds to close over, and while they _itch_ underneath her skin, she’s at least mentally aware enough to stop trying to dig the imaginary ink out with her fingernails.

With awareness comes understanding and recognition. She’s on a desert planet called Jakku. The _they_ her mind categorised as some bizarre _other_ settle into people; some sort of doctor, nervous deliverers of food and water, thugs grudgingly asking questions; all priming her for work. They bandage her arms and give her maths problems and memory games and puzzles, and when she keeps asking, someone finally admits she’s chained to ensure she doesn’t hurt anyone else.

 _Cognitive testing_ , the voice in her head whispers as she fills out the squares of a number puzzle.

She tries not to think about it.

She remembers waking up and remembers that desperate, raw madness, and she remembers awareness and understanding and tests and questions asked every moment of every day.

But she doesn’t remember why her parents left or when they’re coming back.

Her entire life spans the week and a half since she woke up on this planet. There’s nothing before that; a yawning abyss she stands on the edge of, no sound, no light, just _nothing_ stretching back into forever, and she can stare into it as much as she likes but there aren’t any answers. Only the dark.

She doesn’t know if that primitive, ruthless, instinctive urge to _hide_ comes from there or if the voice in her head means she’s already too far gone.

She just tries not to think about it.

—

Except, there is _one_ thing.

“Can you remember your name?”

It comes to her, not from the darkness, not from the voice, but from herself. A name that isn’t a name, rising from somewhere inside herself she doesn’t know how to find and falling from her lips like a prayer.

“Rey. My name… my name’s Rey.”

She has nothing else in the whole wide universe so she clings to this for all she’s worth. She holds onto her name when the itch gets too bad, when the voice snarls or screams or cries so loud it drowns out everything else. Carves it into her heart and promises to remember through everything that might make her want to forget.

 _I am Rey_.

—

One day, without warning, she’s taken from the dingy tent and put in a bigger, dingier tent with other children. Some older, some younger, all of them without parents. Suddenly, she has a bedroll and clothes to keep clean, and food only if she earns it. Days spent scrubbing scrap metal until her skin is raw. The children talk about the desert heat and say it’ll be okay as long as she does what she’s told and it won’t always be like this. They tell her she’s safe from the Nightwatchers and Gnaw-jaws, at least. They tell her every day is the same, but if she keeps working hard, she might grow up to be a proper scavenger.

They tell her the brand stops burning, eventually.

Inside her head, the voice tells her to run.

_Run keep running don’t stop keep me hidden keep me secret keep me safe you have to run and run and run and runandrunandrunaNDRUNANDRUNANDRUN—_

It takes a liar to spot a lie and Rey has been keeping secrets since the moment she first heard the voice. She doesn’t believe them, but she’s grateful they care enough to try to make her feel better.

So, she says nothing at all.

—

Six months on, she can think it without breaking down.

She’s a slave.

The tent she’s in is for other slaves. A boy, supposedly two years older, tells her every single one of them is an orphan.

“But you have parents,” Rey points out. 

The boy snorts into his rations. “Might as well say I don’t. Mum’s in prison, Dad sold me for spice money. They don’t care about me. None of them care about any of us.”

Rey looks around the table where they’re all gathered for dinner. Their handlers—more nameless thugs who seem to exist purely to look menacing—are finishing up their own dinner; she can hear them laughing outside. There are four boys and three girls and two xenos, other than Rey and the other boy, and all of them say nothing. Most pick at their food as if they’ll find a rebuttal in there. The oldest, more teenager than girl, gives Rey a tired smile. The youngest, a wide-eyed four-year old Rodian, stares out the fluttering tent flaps.

“Your parents must have really hated you if they brought you here to sell,” the boy says through a mouthful of rehydrated bread. He leans over the table, voice suddenly hushed. “Do you _really_ think they’re coming back? You can’t be that stupid—or did they beat you that stupid? It happens, y’know.” 

Rey considers him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of an asshole?”

Afterwards, the boy is sent to the shackling tent with a bruised eye and a split lip and only water to drink to make up for the medical expenses he’s responsible for _wasting_. Rey is taken somewhere she doesn’t recognise with a broken nose and cracked ribs and the taste of blood and told the same will happen to her once she’s recovered.

She curls up around the pain of it, stares at her purpling knuckles and thinks her parents made the right decision after all.

—

After that, for the most part, she’s left alone. Time melds together in an endless stretch of burning days and freezing nights, the monotony broken only by the rare occurrence of a particularly valuable piece of scrap—and the fights that follow. She learns to keep her head down and her eyes sharp, picking out scrap that will give her food without someone breaking _her_. Age, size, gender; none of it matters on Jakku. If you can move, you can work. If you can work, you can have it taken from you by blasters and knives and fists and teeth.

Though, there are advantages to being… part of Plutt’s _employ_. She hardly sees the hulking Crolute, busy as he is hoarding every food portion he can get his thick hands on, but he’ll occasionally come and pick out a group of children before the work day starts. Rey hasn’t gone yet, but she knows the kids are taken by actual scavengers to crawl around the Star Destroyers lining the horizon. Longer hours, harder work, larger haul—more food portions.

The morning Rey is chosen is the same morning she can breathe again without it hurting. She’s at the front of the line, trudging blearily through the pre-dawn light, eyes on her feet, when a hand suddenly tightens around her upper arm and yanks her to the side. Her skin jumps at the contact, adrenaline surging her head upright— _hidehidehide—_ but all she does is blink at Plutt. He ignores her.

Seven other kids are chosen, and they’re led across Niima Outpost to an indistinct collection of shadows rising from the sand like ghouls. Rey feels herself slowing down, jitters that have nothing to do with the cold catching her pace.

_No, no, no, keep me hidden, keep me secret, no, you have to ru—_

Something roughly pushes her forward, nearly sending her sprawling.

“Hurry up, girl,” Plutt grumbles.

A withered patch of burned skin tingles on her back. She catches up to the group.

The voice doesn’t stop its incessant whispers as they line up, dragging her away from Plutt’s bartering and her shivering fellows. It happens—though never as intensely as that first stretch of madness when she was ~~abandoned~~ left behind. A flash of warning before a fight breaks out; a sudden impression when she’s cleaning, a flux of memory not her own that gives her an idea of what the scrap was used for; a murmur of unease when a storm is coming: little distractions that turn her head or pause her movements long enough to catalogue the feeling into tangible thought before moving on.

Right now, it’s making her wonder if the extra food at the end of the day will be worth it. It’s near-impossible to discern details in the dimness, but she doesn’t—

She can’t—

She shouldn’t go with any of these scavengers.

_You have to keep me safe have to run run run before—_

She doesn't know. The dark never offers any answers.

“Mashra not coming today?” Plutt grunts. The shadows ripple, letting loose a string of mutters and shrugs. “Well, the rest of you hurry up and pick. Sun’s rising.”

One by one, the children meld with the scavengers and disappear into shadow. Rey folds inwards, closing her eyes as the voice rises from a murmur to a yell, her own thoughts smothered down to pricking desperation in her veins. She can’t go with any of these people. She _can’t_. But it’s all raw instinct and a voice that shouldn’t exist, and even if she _could_ articulate her fears, it’s not like she can just _not_ go. The only choice she has is to wait and hope she isn’t picked—and if she is, she’ll just have to survive it the same way she did the last two hundred and fifteen days.

In the midst of this, with only two scavengers and three children and nine crescent-shaped scratches on her palms, Rey nearly misses the whining drone of an approaching speeder.

And the voice goes quiet.

It’s so startling Rey forgets to keep being afraid.

“I know, I am late.” An Aqualish clambers out of the speeder, voice battered and squashed into Basic like she’s sneaking up on the words and clubbing them over the head. “There is still time, yes? I need a little one today.”

Plutt snorts—a disgusting sound—and gestures to the other two scavengers. “First come, first served, Mashra. You know how it works.”

_This one. This one._

Feeling restructured into tangible thought, and Rey’s half on her way towards Mashra before she realises what she’s doing and freezes.

Mashra stares intently at her, expression indecipherable. But there’s a quirk to the Aqualish’s cheek, or maybe a glint in her eye, or something about the way she holds herself—whatever it is, Rey knows she’s _amused._ “Perhaps, but it seems I have a volunteer. Little one indeed.”

For a few, heart-stopping moments, Rey is sure Plutt isn’t going to let her go. But all he does is say, “This one’s never been out before. Try to bring her back in one piece.” And then he grins at Mashra and winks, like he’s sharing a joke just between the two of them. “Unlike the last three.”

—

Despite Plutt’s macabre sense of humour hovering over her, Rey _loves_ the speeder ride. She sits up as high as she dares in the passenger seat, fighting back giggles as the wind catches her clothes and twirls around her in playful zephyrs, daring her to chase it. She can’t stop looking around—at the dunes flying by, the far away ridges changing shape, the Star Destroyers growing from specks to giants to leviathans as they approach the Graveyard. Other wreckages are scattered about, burnt out skeletons of starfighters and rusted remains of planet-side transports, but Mashra speeds past them without a glance or word. Unfortunately, she doesn’t direct them towards the Star Destroyers either.

Instead, she veers off towards a light cruiser just as the sun is reaching its zenith. The ship is tucked deep into the sand, the pincered nose angled up towards the sky while its engines form the foundations for a sand dune so steep it’s practically perpendicular. Rey cranes her neck all the way back to look at the behemoth of technology in utter wonder, because cleaning the tiny pieces that kept it going and seeing what it was meant to be are two entirely different things, even with the holes that have been ripped through it, exposing its guts to the stars it once sailed between.

Imagine sitting at the helm of _that_ , knowing you could go _anywhere_ in the galaxy with the press of a button.

Who would ever want to stay on the ground?

“Little one, can you read?”

Rey snaps herself back into reality, turning to look at the bound notebook Mashra produced from somewhere inside her blood red robes. She shrugs.

“No matter,” Mashra hums, flipping through the notebook and handing it to Rey. Squiggles fill the right page, some jumping out as familiar, most just sitting there in fancy shapes. On the left page, however, is a drawing done in such detail Rey feels like she could reach in and snatch it out. “You see this, here?” Mashra taps the drawing. “Power cell found in cooling unit. Very valuable, particularly if there is charge still left. You memorise this, you go in, you bring the same thing out.”

Rey nods slowly, pulling her scarf further down her face to get a better look. “Is it dangerous?” she asks, coughing a little as her vocal chords protest their use after so long.

“Always, little one,” Mashra replies, though not unkindly. “I will show you where to go, but it is too small for me to follow. Do not touch something if you do not know what it is and do not try to move anything unless there is no other choice. If you get stuck, there will be nothing I can do to help you.”

It’s strange, hearing harsh syllables but feeling the regret. The softness carefully rolled up and cushioning the weight. Rey lightly thumbs the paper, distracted by the image of a night that lasted forever and a shaking hand, written words perfectly legible in her mind as she watches them explain the collapse that trapped the last child Mashra chose. A terrible accident. Permanent nightmares.

Rey gives the notebook back and looks Mashra in the eye. “I’ll be careful,” she promises.

Mashra leads her through the wrecked interior of the ship with a grace that has Rey feeling something she never has before: envy. It isn’t angry or anything like that, just a recognition that the woman’s easy control of her body is something to be strived for—especially if Rey doesn’t want to spend now until her parents come back scrubbing junk. And it’s _good_ to use her body, to test the limits of her strength and dexterity, reaching heights she never knew she could.

She’s careful, though, to keep her hands to herself when she doesn’t have to climb. The voice is quiet, but Rey can hear the other whispers hovering in the cool air, desperately searching out a listener for their stories. They haven’t noticed her yet.

_But they will. You should listen._

Quiet. Contemplative. A warm wash instead of a freezing drench. Rey nods to thin air and focuses on the task at hand. She knows they won’t hurt her. 

The climb down to the cooling unit is the worst part, but not because of the tight fit or the warping shadows or the sharp pressure of metal groaning under its own weight on all sides. Crawling down into the dark reminds her of the void inside her head. Breath loud in her ears, heart pounding in her chest, hands and feet tapping out a broken rhythm, and there’s nothing else. Mashra a distant illusion. Niima Outpost even more so. A universe where only she exists and everything else is a distant dream.

It’s like the rest of the galaxy never happened and she’ll spend the rest of eternity crawling through the dark alone. Always alone.

_Left behind._

And for the first time, it’s Rey who reaches. She steps back—or maybe forward?—into her own mind and feels, well, _something_ respond. Mashra’s presence a glowing spot above her, a single star in an otherwise empty sky. There are flashes of other things, too small or too far away to make out, but the point is they’re there and Rey _clings_. Keeps them as reminders before the monsters can drag her all the way down.

She’s still a little surprised when she returns with the power cell to find Mashra actually existed all along.

So. The power cell is worth ten full food portions. By itself. Which is more food than Rey’s ever seen in her _life_. And when it’s time for Rey to return to the sleeping tent, Mashra gives her three food portions and leaves with a, “Don’t eat them all at once, little one. I may need you again,” and Rey—

Rey goes to bed that night and closes her eyes with a full stomach weighing her down for the first time since she can remember. It’s… strange. Lets her drift off in a warm haze that has nothing to do with desert heat. It isn’t _happiness,_ exactly. She knows happiness is the ache in her chest whenever she thinks about her parents coming back. But maybe this is just as good.

 _Hope,_ the voice whispers.

It’s a word Rey’s never heard before. She holds onto it anyway.

—

The day she turns eight, Rey strides up to Plutt and thanks him for his generous hospitality all these years, then tells him that she’ll be living elsewhere from now on. He lets her go without much fuss—just a wink and an assurance his thugs will leave her alone as long as she doesn’t get any stupid ideas in her head.

“I’m eight, not an idiot,” she says, the brand on her back burning under her clothes.

She takes her bag and the makeshift bat she tore from starship metal, and ignores the eyes watching her as she leaves.

_Run and keep me, little girl, run and run and run._

The AT-AT, like everything else, is half-buried in sand, but it’s easy enough to crawl in and out of, and there’s little chance of someone trying to scavenge its parts with so many more valuable ships scattered around. She yanks out what little she can sell, sets up traps and strings up a hammock the way Mashra taught her, then spends the rest of the day carving 1,357 marks into the wall. Both her wrists are aching by the time the sun goes down.

Before she goes to sleep, she remembers to dribble water over the tiny spinebarrel growing in the corner.

It isn’t much. But it is _hers_.

—

She learns to count and draw before she can write or read, but once she has the latter points down she starts keeping notebooks obsessively. Mashra observes her never-ending quest for paper with a resigned sort of amusement, occasionally giving in to Rey’s insistence on trading scrap for it, and eventually showing her the best way to bind paper to keep it neat. Ivano Troade, another scavenger with a need for small bodies, thinks the whole endeavour is pointless, but they do teach Rey to speak Binary after they come across a defective R2-unit stuck in a wall, and they also tell her stories she never hears anywhere else.

She knows the big ones, of course. Everyone knows those. The Battle of Jakku, The Empire, the Rebellion, the Sith, the Jedi, the Death Star, Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3PO, the Millennium Falcon—a whole universe worth of names and places and ships. But Ivano tells her about other things too. About officers’ meals poisoned by tired kitchen staff. About oppressors beat down by furious slaves at the cost of themselves. About hidden rooms in family homes, food stashes throughout the galaxy, information found and delivered, planets saved by the most ordinary of people.

“Why would they do that?” Rey asks, staring across the Outpost. At Plutt greedily hoarding the only thing keeping them alive. At the myriad of scavengers with their heads down and shoulders defeated. “Why would they put themselves in danger like that?”

“For something bigger than themselves, I suppose,” Ivano says as they chip a clod of sand out of a carburettor. “Jakku ain’t the normal way of things, pup. There’s a whole galaxy out there. Plenty of space to rely on others.” They set down the pick and shrug. “Or maybe they were all insane. That’d be up to you.”

Rey thinks they must have been, but she also hears a voice nobody else does that warns her of danger and never stops wailing for her to _run_ , so maybe being insane isn’t a qualification for helping other people after all.

She wonders why Mashra and Ivano help _her_ , but when she asks them, separately, they only give her a strange look and remind her of her age.

“So?” she asks.

Mashra doesn’t say anything to that. Ivano turns away and mutters something about _stupid blobfish bastards,_ and Rey decides not to press. Mashra and Ivano are the closest things she has to friends, and while she can’t rely on them, they’re something _familiar_. Something that makes it easier to smile in the days after they’ve scavenged together.

Sometimes, on _bad_ days, Rey dreams of them flying her off this planet. It always leaves her feeling strangely empty as she scrubs sleep from her eyes, tries to remember the mother and father who let her go and only finds the dark.

It doesn’t matter much on Jakku anyway. Whatever adventure the stars hold is irrelevant, and while people pair off here and there, while kids survive through the will of others who have no reason to give a damn whether they live or die, the cardinal rule is, and always will be, every person for themselves. Rey learns how to count and draw before she can write or read, but before that she learns how to _fight_. And she learns how to win, too.

The knife tears through the skin on her arm as she dodges down, grip tightening on her bat as she spins and swings upwards and cracks the end against the man’s jaw, and someone is screaming but they aren’t helping and Rey hasn’t eaten in _days_ and the man is _laughing_ —

An hour later, Plutt eyes her dispassionately as she dumps her haul on his counter with one working arm.

“Who did that to you?” he asks. She looks back at him through the eye that isn’t swollen. He isn’t asking for her. He’s asking because she’s one of the best scavengers he owns and he _knows_ it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replies. “He’s gone now.”

Plutt gives her a tiny strip of bacta bandage and one quarter portion.

The galaxy is an ugly thing, she decides.

—

Only having one arm that isn’t a useless mess of screaming nerves makes everything twice as difficult, but Mashra and Ivano are nowhere to be found—which happens, Rey’s used to it—so she makes do on her own. The Starship Graveyard is where most of the scavengers end up, but there’s plenty of scrap to be found in the Goazon Badlands. Remnants of a battle nobody cares about right on her doorstep.

Rey gingerly moves a skeleton from a control panel and tries not to vomit as the blaster hole that killed it wreaks imaginary havoc on her insides. After that, she opens the door and continues deeper into the freighter. She’s trying to get to the cargo in case there’s actually something of value to be found, but she isn’t really expecting it. Most freighter class ships on Jakku are the kind that were repurposed in the war to be combat oriented, so if they have anything at all, it’s usually weapons.

Still, there’s always hope.

As she’s poking around a collapsed wall, searching for a way to squeeze through, testing to see if anything will collapse if she tries to bat her way through it, she rests her weight on one particular spot—

And falls through the karking floor.

The drop isn’t huge, but the shock rattles her through and through, and she barely has enough time to register the floor coming up to meet her. Blind instinct carries her into a roll that ends with her sprawled on her back, injured arm cradled against her chest and lungs spasming in an effort to regain equilibrium. Then, for a few moments, she just lies there.

“Stupid,” she whispers. The hold echoes the word back at her. “Why couldn’t you have warned me about that?”

There’s no answer from the voice—only the trembling vibrations in the metal and air around her, displaced atoms driven to a frenzy. She sits up slowly as the mania settles down around her, carefully twisting her limbs to make sure nothing is broken. Thinks of another collapse from a memory that was never hers and swallows down panic.

_Assess. Prioritise. What can I do first?_

She stands up and examines the space around her. It’s dark, windows blocked by sand, loading ramp crumpled inwards like something tried to break through from the other side. A single shaft of light, brimming with dust motes, extends down from the hole she fell through, and it’s too high for her to reach. On one side of the hold there’s a pile of crates spread haphazardly around. Nothing on the other side.

_Sound._

Rey has her bat in her hand in a second. The scrabbling ends just as quickly, a ringing aftermath left behind as the only clue it was real. Emptiness extends all around her. The closest living thing she can sense is a murder of Ripper-raptors, but they’re somewhere in the sky far away.

“Hello?” she asks uncertainly. Flinches when the sound produces another flurry of movement—sharp taps, metal on metal, jabbing through her ears. She approaches the crates, adjusting her grip on the bat, squinting through the dark. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I just want to get out of here. I just want to go.”

Another rhythm of taps, alternating back and forth. Despite herself, Rey lowers the bat. It doesn’t sound big enough to hurt her. And the voice isn’t offering any input so she probably isn’t in any real danger.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she says and slips the bat into her backpack. “But I’m going to move these crates. I need them to climb out of here.” She waits, feeling like an idiot. “Is that… okay?”

Nothing. Rey turns around, examining every inch of the hold as her eyes finally begin to adjust to the dark. It was definitely movement she heard—the sound was too purposeful to be a result of her fall. Metal doesn’t break in alternating steps. Whatever it is, it can walk. But if she can’t sense it, that means it can’t be alive.

Helpfully, her mind decides to remind her of the skeleton blocking the door above. Ice trickles down her spine. A twinge runs through her arm.

_Sound._

Dread tightening her stomach, she turns back, fully expecting hollowed out eyes and bleached bone and dagger-like fingers twitching towards her face—

Instead, from the nearest crate, a tiny droid pokes its head out.

Rey screams anyway.

A crash and a high-pitched whistle of alarm follow her as she jumps towards the light, whole body thumping from the second shot of adrenaline in as many minutes. She stumbles on her way back, flailing to keep her balance, and in her panic, she stretches her arm the wrong way, and there’s no room to be scared after that because it feels like someone is slicing into her with a knife all over again.

She hisses, clutching at her arm, forcing herself to sit and breathe until the pain burns itself out. The sliver of bacta bandage has ripped away, half-healed skin pulsing angrily from exposure. When she runs her thumb underneath the slit, a spot of blood wells up.

“Shit. Shit, shit, _shit_ ,” she curses, she lets herself be angry, because she’s tired and hungry and in pain and that stupid scavenger wasn’t _worth_ the blood she spilled fighting him off. It’s stupid and unfair and it _hurts_ and—

More noise cuts off her train of thought. She looks up, blinking away tears, to find the droid cautiously approaching, trilling little inquisitive beeps that don’t mean anything except _beep_. It really is small, just barely filling out the space up to Rey’s calf. Most of it is white, a few splashes of faded crimson running down its legs, and it’s staring up at her with two sensors—one cracked—filled with uncertainty and worry.

Rey’s _sure_ she’s seen that look somewhere before, droid or no.

“I’m okay,” she whispers, trying to hide the tremble in her voice. “I’m okay, sorry. I didn’t mean to scream.”

The droid keeps slowly moving forward, as if its afraid of scaring _her_ and not the other way around, closer and closer until she could reach out and touch it if she wanted. She keeps still, watching as it enters the little circle of light, bends its head down to the left, and opens a compartment from underneath.

A soft green glow emanates from a single canister inside. The droid wiggles, prompting Rey to grab the canister and hold it up to the light. It’s liquid, whatever it is, calmly undulating between a needle and a plunger. 

“Um…” She looks back to the droid who is regarding her expectantly. “I don’t know what this is.”

[“It’s a Stim pack. It heals you and gives your system a boost,”] it chirps.

Rey tilts her head, surprised to hear the droid speak. The droid copies her motion and she fights down a smile. “You’re giving this to me?”

[“You’re hurt,”] the droid warbles quietly—like it actually cares.

_How long has it been down here?_

The voice remains a silent fixture in the back of her head, leaving only the dark and her own thoughts. She rolls the Stim between her fingers, hesitating. But the voice has never steered her wrong, not with Mashra or Ivano or the _others_ she never wanted to go with but had no choice to and does her best to forget. It’s not _knowledge_ or anything like that. It never has been. Just a _feeling_.

A feeling that she can trust this little droid, trapped in the dark, alone, offering to help someone for no reason other than because they’re hurt, and it can.

Rey has to bite her lip and take a couple breaths before she can talk without bursting into tears. She has no idea _why_. “I just—I just inject it in?” she asks, and while the words don’t shake, her voice is far from steady.

The droid bobs its head up and down, and Rey raises the Stim up to her arm. She winces when it goes in, injects the contents until the canister is empty, then slowly pulls it away. The effect is immediate. Coolness spreads through the damaged layers of skin, washing away the pain, spreading up through her shoulder and down to her fingertips. Tension she was unaware of releases, her whole body loosening in relief, and when she takes another look at her wound, it’s already scabbed over. The only proof it happened yesterday is the small trickle of blood still stained on her skin.

Overwhelmed, she scrubs at her eyes to make sure no saltwater has welled up while she wasn’t paying attention. “That's—whoa. That’s so much better, thank you.”

The droid bounces from foot to foot, head held up high. [“You’re welcome!”]

“Hey, wait, stop jumping,” she says, pointing to its head, only now noticing. The droid swivels its head all the way around in confusion, trying to follow her finger. “No, stop—your antennae’s bent,” she laughs. “Hold still and let me fix it.”

The droid chirps and waits patiently as she leans over and straightens out the flexible material, carefully angling it so it mirrors the one on the opposite side.

“There you go," she says when she's done, feeling giddy and strange.

[“Thank you,”] the droid replies with such sincerity Rey fidgets, cheeks aflame. Its one working sensor is zooming in and out on her face, and she’s surprised to find she doesn’t really mind the scrutiny. [“Hello, I’m BeeDee-One. What’s your name?”]

And something changes in the air. A miniature shift touching on the edges of her awareness, a flash of light in the endless void, and the little world around them suddenly goes very quiet. It’s gone too quick for her to ever grasp what it means, but Rey knows, somehow, that something is about to change for good.

( _Are you ready to run?_ )

“Hello, BeeDee-One,” she says, and her smile reaches all the way up to her eyes as BD-1 wiggles in delight at the sound of its name. “I’m Rey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I want to write a fix-it fic  
> Also me: *is incapable of writing happy things*  
> ... I'll get back to you on that
> 
> So, self-indulgent as fuck, as per usual ~~I mean it is jedistormpilot.~~ I should be working on GotH-and I am, next chapter's actually almost done, but then uni decided to dump four essays on me at once alongside a dissertation deadline and this happened in a fit of tired mania. 
> 
> Apologies for any errors.
> 
> This wasn't actually supposed to be so long but then Mashra and Ivano slipped in like ninjas and I just ran with it. This fic is mostly plotted out, but there's probably going to be a fair amount of that. 
> 
> I have an ending, just not too bothered about how I get there. I mean, other than it making sense. 
> 
> Lemme know what ya think - questions, comments, concerns, anything ya feel like saying. We're here for fun, lads. 
> 
> On that note, I have to walk my friend's dog five miles tomorrow so it's time to sleep. Hope you enjoy!


	2. Broken Little Things Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couple notes for anyone who hasn't played the game (which, if you haven't, thank you so much for giving this a try anyway!):
> 
> First, spoilers for the entire game. I updated the tags for that.  
> Second, this is all new to Rey too, so a lot of stuff will be explained, and there'll be extra stuff I add in as well as things pulled directly from the game. I'll make sure to mention at the start of chapters when this happens. Feel free to ask questions if you're ever confused!
> 
> On that note, there's a section in Fallen Order where you nick an AT-AT, and this is alluded to in the chapter. There will also be a hologram of Cal, but it shows something I made up for the purposes of this fic.
> 
> Creative liberties flying us forward friends.  
> Enjoy!

_I don’t know where I am._

_I don’t know where I am and I haven’t known for_ [Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable]. _I don’t know why that happens. I don’t know why I can’t remember. I know that I’m damaged, but I remember Master Cordova, and I remember my Cal, and I remember friend-Cere and friend-Greez and sister-Merrin, but I don’t remember where they went. Or why they left me behind._

_I don’t like this._

_I want to know where my Cal is. I would never leave my Cal behind. But he isn’t here and I’m alone and I_ _d_ _͔͈͋̕͞ͅ_ _ö_ _̺͎_ _́_ _͂͆͜_ _ń_ _̢͓̞̙͛̔_ _̉'_ _̜͎̞̌̂̽_ _t_ _͈͡_ _̰̝̹͊_ _́_ _͒_ _́_ _̕͟ͅ_ _k_ _̾͜_ _n_ _̤̺_ _̣_ _͐̅_ _̃_ _͜͠_ _o_ _̗͛_ _w_ _̼͔̗͈_ _̃_ _̏̆͘_ _̠̝̘͚͒͗̋͞_ _w_ _̱͍̹̄̇_ _̀h_ _̬̙̞̊̈̄_ _y_ _̜̤̫͌̋̾_ _._

[Warning: 2% Battery Remaining. Shutdown Imminent]

_“You okay in there, BeeDee?”_

_Except—I’m not alone. Not anymore. For the first time since_ [Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable].

 _I don'_ _͔͗_ _t_ _̛̲_ _l͇_ _̋̄ͅ_ _ik_ _͍͕̽͘_ _ḙ̢̻͂̑͞_ _͕̖͎̂̐͑_ _t_ _̖̱_ _̣_ _͉_ _́_ _̔̆̿_ _h_ _̩̆_ _i_ _̜͍̥̥͉̐_ _̉_ _̌̄_ _̃s_ _̻͔͕̭̞̄̓͌_ _́̉._ _̨̻̙͇̋̈_ _́_ _̿͛͟͡_

[“My battery’s really low. Is it much further?”]

_“No, it isn’t.” The space around me jostles, bouncing as we pick up speed. “A few more minutes. I’m sure there’s a charging station at—where I sleep.”_

_She says it strangely. As if she meant to say something else but stopped herself. My Cal used to say,_ [“Home?”]

_There’s silence for a long time. I must have said something wrong. Maybe my memory of that is corrupted, too. But then I hear, very quietly, “No. Not home.”_

_And she sounds so sad I think my memory must be correct._

_Her name is Rey. She’s eight years old but she will soon turn nine. She is_ [4”] _and she is_ [44 pounds], _and she suffers from_ [dehydration/malnutrition/sunburn]. _She is alone. She lives in the desert, because I’m on a desert planet and I don’t know how I got here, so she lives in the desert alone, and when she helped me climb out of the cargo hold, she told me to hide in her backpack. Even though she was scared. Even though she is so very, very small. I said she didn’t have to carry me, but she insisted:_

_“If anyone sees you, they’ll try and take you for scrap.”_

[“That isn’t nice! I’m not scrap!”]

_“… No. But most everyone here isn’t nice. So, stay hidden, okay?”_

_I did. I have. We’ve walked for a long time and it’s hot outside and my battery is very low. But I don’t think I’m afraid. I’m too busy knowing she is kind, because when she fell into the dark and woke me up, she put her weapon away and told me she was sorry._

_I’m glad I let her see me. I’m glad I’m not trapped in the dark on a ship I don’t know while my power cell depletes and I wait for_ [Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable].

 _I_ _͉͐_ _̨͈̦̝͕̄̎͛̏̍_ _ḩ͙̝_ _̀_ _̇͠_ _a_ _̠̠͙̎͂̈_ _́_ _͟͝_ _t_ _͔͍̼̤̙͑̒̏͞͠_ _ȇ̦̈_ _́_ _̚͜ͅ_ _̢̟͖̲̌͂_ _̉_ _͒_ _t_ _̜͠_ _ȟ̢̘͠ǐ͓̜_ _̣_ _̦̑_ _̀_ _͝_ _ŝ_ _̨̻͋͞ͅ_ _._ _̱̭̟̅͛͐͘͢_

_“Here we are.”_

_The bag opens and I step out into another metal interior. This one I_ do _recognise—even if everything is turned on its side._

[“An All Terrain Armoured Transport?”]

_“You’ve been inside one before?” she asks as she settles a blanket over the entrance, tucking it around the edges to stop sand from blowing in. There’s a lot of sand inside already. “I suppose you must have been, if you’ve been on Jakku. These things are everywhere.”_

[“I stole one once,”] I tell her. [“But it wasn’t on Jakku. I’ve never heard of Jakku.”]

_She tilts her head at me, her eyes wide and her mouth downturned. “Well… you’re on Jakku. You must have been down in that hold a long time.” She bites her lip. The green blanket is faded and thin, and with the sun shining through, it makes the metal shimmer like we’re underwater. “Was that, um… I found a skeleton inside. Was that someone you knew?”_

[“No. That wasn’t my ship.”] _I scanned the skeleton before we left. I’ve never met a Togruta… I think._ [“I don’t know how I got there, or how long I’ve been down there. My memory banks are corrupted.”]

_“Corrupted? That can’t be good.”_

[“I don’t know how to fix them. I don’t know where I am or why I’m here or _wher_ _ȇ̺_ _͈͘_ _m_ _̯_ _̀_ _̋͜_ _y_ _̧̼͒̾_ _̡̬͋͗͘͢_ _Cà_ _̢̡͆͞ͅ_ _l_ _̲̚_ _͔͂_ _i_ _̢͈̯_ _̣_ _̬̿_ _́_ _̒_ _̀_ _͋_ _ŝ_ _̝_ _̣_ _̥̳͙̌̈_ _́_ _̔̐_.”]

_“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” She crouches down beside me and her hand is warm when it touches my head. “Is Cal your master’s name?”_

[“He’s mine. He’s mine, I chose him and _h_ _͓͡_ _e_ _̯͌͘ͅ_ _'_ _̤͐_ _s_ _̛̥̼͞_ _̣_ _͖̌̊͐ͅ_ _m_ _̫̺̮̘̋̓̿̚_ _ị_ _͖̦̾͌͒_ _ṋ_ _̣_ _͈̪̂_ _̉_ _̐_ _̀_ _̈͜_ _ẻ_ _̦̤̐_.”]

_“I believe you,” she says, rubbing my chassis, smiling softly. I like her smile. She should always be smiling. But then it fades and she pulls her hand back so she can fold it around her knees. “I’m waiting for someone as well. My parents—they left me here, by accident I think. But I don’t really remember, either.” She shudders, nails digging in too deep, but she’s smiling again and I don’t understand because it looks like it hurts. “But they’ll come back. I know it. I bet your Cal will come looking for you, too.”_

_Will he?_

_Is he?_

_C_ _ȁ͈_ _l_ _̨̰̺͗̎͡_ _?_ _̬̦͈̏̄̈_ _́_ _̕͟_

_“Anyway, you need a recharge, right?” She sways to her feet and picks her way across the room, ducking under her hammock and tapping against the wall. One of her knocks rings hollow, a cavernous growl that rattles the AT-AT like it’s about to get up and start firing. Instead, she fits her nails into a groove and pulls a panel loose, revealing a power pack nestled in amongst wires and blinking lights. “This’ll work, right?”_

_I hop up to the panel and scan it. Everything connected is Imperial technology, but the power cell itself isn’t something I recognise._

_When I ask, she says, “Oh, yeah, I got it from an X-Wing. One of my—I mean, a scavenger I work with showed me how to wire it in. It’d be a mess if this thing was still trying to walk around, but since I just need some lights and to recharge a few tools, it works well enough. There should be enough left to charge you. And I’ll find more eventually. I always do.”_

_I look at her._ [“You’re eight.”]

_She huffs. “So? How old are you?”_

_I don’t know how to answer either of those questions, so I let her examine my port and look at her some more. Because me and my Cal saw many things across the galaxy. We saw the way the Empire smashed and stomped and burned everything it could get its hands on just because it_ could _, and we saw the pain it caused and worlds it destroyed and the people it broke. My Cal_ knows _the pain it caused, because the same thing happened to him. And it’s so very easy to see how all that grief and fear and loneliness and anger can become all that_ hate _._

_Sometimes—when my Cal and friend-Cere discuss Bad Things, when I remember what Master Cordova found, when I think about sister-Merrin living amongst all her dead family—I think I understand why the Empire won._

_And I look at her and I think she should be the same. I don’t know her, not at all, not really, but she is alone and she is eight, and she holds a bat that is stained with blood that doesn’t belong to her, and there’s a knife wound on her arm and a splotched bruise around her eye, and she has only mentioned one person who ever helped her which makes me think there are far too many more who never would. She is small and she is starving and she was left behind like me, but when she produces the right cable, her smile is bright and her eyes are brighter, and I see the thing my Cal and friend-Cere always said would tear the Empire down._

_In this girl, in every shining edge of her being, I see hope._

[Warning: Unknown Device Connected – Trust? Y/N  
{Y}  
Processing…  
Connection Successful. 2% Charged. Approx. 04:52:12 to 100%]

[“It’ll be quicker if I power down,”] _I say. It’s hard. There are a lot of processes trying to run simultaneously and I don’t have the power to sustain them._

_“That’s okay. I need to go out again, anyway,” she says, and I see now she’s grabbing her backpack and pulling her scarf over her face. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be, but don’t worry. You’ll be safe in here.”_

_And there are so many things I’m trying to think that it comes out automatically._ [“You _will_ come back, won’t you?”]

_She stops at the entrance, looks back, head cocked in mimicry to mine. I can only see her eyes, the way they pinch in maybe-surprise/maybe-uncertainty/maybe-hurt, maybe all the things that happen when nobody is at where-you-sleep waiting for you._

_“Yeah,” she says, quiet and wobbly. “I’ll come back, BeeDee. I promise.” I think she smiles again after that. I hope so. It’s a good thing to hope for. “And when I get back, you can tell me about that AT-AT you stole.”_

[“Deal!”]

_—_

Rey doesn’t know why she isn’t selling BD-1.

It wouldn’t exactly be difficult. All she’d have to do is power him down, put him back in her bag, and take him to Plutt. He’d have to be worth _at least_ twenty portions, and that’s even with the damage and memory corruption. Besides which, he needs power to recharge, and power cells are the kind of thing she keeps for emergencies. She can go without lights for a few days. She can’t keep going without food.

She knows that all too well.

But when it comes to it, when BD-1 nestles himself into a corner, mostly out of sight, legs folded and head drooped and sensor dark, Rey settles her backpack comfortably around her shoulders and heads back out into the desert.

It’s midday, and the sun is a scorching, relentless presence mocking her every attempt to move forward. Her breath is clammy against her face, tongue thick and heavy, and she knows being outside at this time is guaranteed to leave lasting burns—clothes or no. It’s the very worst kind of weather Jakku has to offer, the time of day only the lost and desperate risk enduring. All the other scavengers will be holed up inside starships or camped out in caves, waiting for the temperature to decline before venturing back out, but Rey doesn’t have time for that. Not now.

Which is a whole other reason to take BD-1 to Plutt and be done with it, but she just keeps on walking towards the lump of dunes that are exactly the same as every lump of dunes, except Rey’s certain she caught the glint of TIE fighter amongst them earlier. TIE fighters have all sorts of neat junk, and there might be a power cell as well.

A power cell she can keep for BD-1.

She pauses at the bottom of a hill, risking bare skin for a moment to swallow half a mouthful of water. Strangely enough, she isn’t as exhausted as she should be. She isn’t that hungry either. There’s a twitch running through her muscles, something that’s been there since she left the cargo hold with BD-1 hidden in her bag. It isn’t quite an itch, though it does make her want to dig her nails in and _drag_ because something’s _wrong_ and she needs to _getitout—_

She wants to run. She wants to hit something. She wants to find this Cal and drag him back by his hair because _how could he?_ How could he abandon BD-1 like that? The desperate, crackling beeps forming around Cal’s name had splintered into Rey, burrowed deep and _stayed there,_ and when BD-1 had asked if she would come back, the potency of the fear in his voice had _shattered_ all those little shards into a clawing ache she _knows_ and never wants to feel _again_.

And for the first time, Rey understands why a person would risk everything for someone else. Because if there’s one thing she knows, it’s pain, the inside kind, the kind that can’t be injected with a Stim and fixed so simply, and it’s never occurred to her that a droid’s feelings should mean anything less than people's do. Rey doesn’t particularly like people or get along with them all that much, but droids don’t have the same problems people do. Droids don’t hurt you because you’re little and they can. Droids are happy as long as they’re being helpful.

Luke Skywalker would never have beaten the empire if he didn’t have R2, Rey would bet her life on it.

But most of this runs through her mind subconsciously, a feeling she can think but doesn’t know how to articulate. It roils inside the dark, that empty space where all the memories of her parents hide, that void where nothing exists and nothing has ever existed and _she’s_ nothing, absolutely _nothing at all_ —

 _This is what the monsters are and they are coming, clawing, consuming, they want you little girl and you have to **RUN**_ —

Rey shudders a breath in and out and begins the arduous task of climbing the dune. The movement helps. It always does. Makes it easier to slot everything into place, the rhythm of her thoughts settling into the rhythm of her body, evening out alongside her balance.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why. Maybe it only matters that BD-1 is scared and alone and hurt, and Rey doesn’t want him to be.

Ignoring the blistering heat spreading down through her shoulders, she picks up her pace.

She has a promise to keep, after all.

_—_

After everything, after 1423 days of just her and the voice and the dark, after the 1424th day of falling into a cargo hold then scrounging up enough scrap for another quarter portion, it’s… well, it’s _them_. It’s Rey and BD-1, living together in the wreck of an AT-AT that’s too big for one little girl, but a little less so for one little girl and her droid. It’s someone to share meals with, even if BD-1 doesn’t eat, and it’s someone to talk to instead of days filled with silence so thick she forgets the sound of her own voice, and it’s a solid weight to hold her up when the _bad days_ come and she can’t see any way forward but down.

True to their deal, BD-1 tells her about the time he and Cal stole an AT-AT. Rey finds the whole thing hilarious, because who _sneaks_ onto a planet by stealing a huge, armoured, walking tank? She isn’t surprised to learn the whole thing quite literally blew up in their faces. But he explains the rest of it too. About Kashyyyk and the Wookies and everything the Empire did to them, about the freedom fighters and how Cal helped take down an entire refinery. Though she’s still a little unclear on what a refinery actually _is_ , she gets the gist of it. She might not know much about the galaxy or technology beyond starship scraps, but she does know how to build a comlink from scratch and that is infinitely more useful, she decides a little desperately.

BD-1 doesn’t have to explain what slavery is. He catches sight of the brand sitting just above her left shoulder blade eight days after they meet. It takes hours for her to convince him not to run to Niima Outpost and overcharge Plutt’s eyes out.

Something vicious and cruel she doesn’t like to think about whispers to let him do it anyway. She ignores it. There’s no way she’d risk BD-1 on the retribution that would follow after he got so angry on her behalf. The warmth blooming in her chest in response to his shrill, indignant beeps is scary and hard to talk around, but that’s only because she’s never felt it before, and by the time BD-1 grudgingly agrees not to murder her only source of food, Rey is laughing more than she’s not.

She might be imagining it, but she thinks BD-1 doesn’t glitch his speech so much after that.

For the most part, life continues on the way it always did. Rey still has to scavenge to survive, she just doesn’t do it alone anymore. BD-1 accompanies her, hiding in her backpack when they’re out in the open, because while Rey’s perfectly aware Plutt keeps other scavengers from going after her, that doesn’t always stop them, and if Plutt knew she had a droid, _he_ wouldn’t stop them either. BD-1 stays hidden without complaint, and when they’re inside the wrecks, Rey lets him out where he skitters about her feet or perches atop her shoulder, happily chittering away by her ear.

With his scans and natural propensity to explore every crevice, Rey soon finds her daily haul doubling in size. He also has a _scomp link_ , which is _amazing_ , and his ability to overcharge Imperial tech has so many uses beyond maiming eyes that in an entirely foreign way, scavenging sort of becomes _fun_. More exploration and adventure than life or death.

So, it’s Rey and BD-1, and it’s days passing one mark on the wall at a time, scrap and stories filling up all that empty space that never quite goes away. And, in amongst it all, Rey finally notices something strange about the way BD-1 tells his stories.

Two things, actually.

The first she brings up nearly a month later. They’re holed up inside a Star Destroyer, high up on a ledge while Rey rests from climbing and BD-1 bounces to and fro, and she’s looking at the cavernous expanse around her and thinking about slaves and refineries and choosing to do the right thing, and she has to ask.

“Hey, BeeDee?” One of the things Rey likes best about him is despite his restless urge to move, he always stops and gives her his full attention when she speaks. “You might not remember, but what did you and Cal do after the Empire fell?”

BD-1 tilts his head all the way to the side. [“What do you mean?”]

“If you remember that, it’d be easier to find him someday, right?” she says, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her knee. Finding the man has never been a question. Cal is BD-1’s, and Rey knows the droid would search the whole galaxy if he had to. “I get you and him and your crew were fighting the Empire, but after the war ended, he might have settled down somewhere. Somewhere you could go back to.”

For a long moment, BD-1 only sits and stares at her. And then, very quietly, he asks, [“What do you mean ‘after the Empire fell’?”]

It’s enough of a shock Rey nearly falls off the ledge. “I mean… that’s—that’s what happened? I told you about the Battle of Jakku.” But she didn’t tell him that it was the Empire’s last stand, did she? Why _would_ she? Everyone knows that. She gestures around them weakly, a jagged ball of ice settling in her stomach. “That’s what all this is. It was the last battle. After Luke Skywalker killed Darth Vader and the Emperor—”

[“ _Killed_?”] BD-1 actually takes a step back. [“Somebody killed Darth Vader?”]

“Um, yeah? I don’t know the details, but all the scavengers talk about it.” She makes a face. “I don’t know how much of it I believe, but the point is the Empire’s gone and there’s a whole new system in place. Not that it does anyone on Jakku any good. Nobody cares about some desert planet littered with starships and scavengers.” She hesitates, voice softening. “You really didn’t know?”

[“I—“] BD-1 twitches, head shaking from side to side. [“I don’t remember—it isn’t working, _w_ _͎̞̼̝̔̍̽͒͘͢_ _h_ _ẏ̼_ isn’t it _w_ _̬̖͙̍_ _̀_ _̈̊͢_ _o_ _̼̕_ _r_ _͈̾_ _k_ _͉̟̟̄͌̊̑͟_ _i_ _̹̞̳̒͋_ _̉ņ_ _̪̞̫̼͂̏͆͞͠_ _g_ _̹͖̞̔̕͡_?”]

Immediately, Rey reaches out. “Ssh, ssh, little one. It’s okay, it’s alright,” she soothes as she lifts BD-1 and settles him in between her legs. He presses his head into her stomach, shivering. The whispers around them rise in pitch, mourning wails that cling to Rey’s skin, leaving marks underneath that will never fade. “I’m sorry. I should’ve said something earlier. I just assumed… I thought everyone knew.”

[“I didn’t,”] BD-1 says, tapering off into little distressed beeps that don’t really mean anything except _scared_. [“I didn’t know. How long ago was it?”]

“I, uh, don’t know. It happened before I was born.”

BD-1 says nothing to that and Rey resolves to ask the next time she’s at the Outpost. There’s always someone willing to talk about it. Usually the older scavengers, though Rey doesn’t know why they think anything’s changed for the better. The Empire used slaves, and maybe not everyone on Jakku is a slave, but it’s not like the New Republic is descending from the sky to do anything about the ones that are here.

It’s one thing to be cruel. It’s another thing entirely to know something is wrong, to see it happening, and still do _nothing_.

_Wrong it’s all wrongwrongwrong and who are you going to be?_

_I am Rey_ , she thinks to herself, as loud and clearly as she can manage before the memories that aren’t hers and the memories that _are_ threaten to shake her apart to the core.

Aloud, she says, “Your memory is corrupted. So maybe you did know, you just can’t access the information. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. There’s still hope.”

That jolts BD-1 and he peers up at her, antennae flattened. [“But how will I find my Cal if I can’t remember?”] he beeps softly. 

The choice is simple, unconditional and without thought, because this is _wrong_ and Rey is tired of watching the galaxy collapse under its own ugliness. If nobody else is going to listen, she’ll _make_ them. 

“I’ll help you.”

BD-1 recoils. [“But—what about your parents? You have to wait for them.”]

_You have to run._

Rey strokes a hand over BD-1’s head, feeling the tiny little bumps and dents along the metal, listening to the distant echoes of feelings and words that never quite form into tangible images. All that warmth and care and happiness, now nothing but a fleeting sensation. She swallows the taste of ash and tries for a smile. “I guess I’ll just have to find them, too. And I can always come back here I need to.”

Come back to Jakku. There’s a joke she’s never heard before.

[“My Rey…”] BD-1 murmurs and Rey’s smile widens enough for her dimples to show.

“Yup. You’re stuck with me now, BeeDee.” She pulls BD-1 up to let him perch on her shoulder before getting to her feet. “C’mon, we have a couple more hours before we have to head back. You wanna hear about Luke Skywalker while we look around?”

He chirps an affirmative and together they head up, and in the shadow of a Star Destroyer, clambering over twisted metal and the whispers of the dead, telling stories from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—so far it might never have existed in the first place—Rey thinks this must be what coming home feels like.

_—_

The second oddity in his stories is one she never mentions. Not because she isn’t curious, because she _is_ , but because she isn’t sure if she wants to know the answer.

After hearing BD-1 talk about him so much, Rey can’t help but like Cal. He seems a little awkward, a little sad, and yet there’s a persistent kindness in his actions that speaks of someone determined to care. About everything. She’ll still hit him if— _when_ —she meets him, but it probably won’t be a punch to the kidney. She might just throw something really heavy at him. And she doesn’t have any qualms with the rest of the crew. Cere, the guiding force and stern mentor. Greez, the pilot and grounding influence they all sorely needed. Merrin, the lost child determined to make things right. A little family in the making, and Rey’s never had one before, but BD-1 makes it sound simultaneously like the best and worst thing in the world.

But for all the things BD-1 tells her, all those stories about a group of ordinary people doing their best to help people, Rey can tell he’s holding something back, too. Not _lying_ , exactly. Merely a strange skittishness that always exhibits itself at some point in any of his stories. Cutting off in the middle of sentences, skimming over details, redirecting questions he doesn’t want to answer.

Cere was Cal’s mentor, but his mentor in what?

Greez was their pilot, but what made him different from the other three, (other than being a Latero)?

Merrin was a Nightsister, but what the kriff does that mean?

And why were they travelling around raiding the tombs of some ancient civilisation anyway?

It feels like they’re circling around something, skimming the edges but never dipping in all the way, and if they ever take the plunge, there’s no guarantee they’d be able to find their way back up. Rey knows it must mean _something_ , but the voice offers no answers.

Only waits. Watches. Wonders what choice she’ll make.

A week later, in the bowels of another Star Destroyer, both she and BD-1 are nearly crushed to death.

Things start to make a little bit more sense after that.

_—_

The morning starts out like any other—in hunger and darkness.

BD-1 has taken to powering down in the hammock whenever he doesn’t need to recharge, which is surprisingly often. Something to do with him being an exploration droid. It makes the issue of power cells that much less urgent, and it also means Rey’s become used to blinking awake to the soft pressure of his weight on her stomach and the trilling beeps of his makeshift alarm.

She’s still deciding if she likes it or not.

It gets her up, at least, and she tumbles out of her hammock, landing on her feet with the blanket still wrapped snuggly around her while BD-1 goes to power on the lights. Outside, the sun is little more than an inevitable dream, the sky ruled by the cold light of the moons and the distant, technicolour pinpricks of stars, as silent as they are unreachable. Rey nibbles on a half portion in between sips of water, automatically stretching her senses out into the sand and wind, cataloguing the nocturnal wildlife as it goes about its business, keeping an eye out for danger. 

Once she’s done with breakfast, she pulls out one of her notebooks and lays it flat so BD-1 can see the pages too.

“You got the map?” she asks.

In response, BD-1 beams out an image of the surrounding landscape, crystalline blue seeping into the paper, metal and shadows. [“Are we still planning to get through that door today?”]

“Mhm,” she hums while she combs through her hair with her fingers, letting the blanket pool around her waist as she begins twisting the strands into buns. On the pages of this notebook are lists, mainly (though there’s also a little BD-1 in the corner wearing a pair of sunglasses). The numbers and directions would mean nothing to someone else, but to her, it’s the easiest way to keep track of where she’s been and where she still needs to go.

The door in question is one they came across yesterday. It’s locked tight, impossible to get through on her own without a cutting torch, extremely easy with a droid and scomp link. Unfortunately, it had been too late to explore when they found it, hence their expedition today.

“Anywhere in particular you think we should go after?”

[“We could try that freighter we saw,”] BD-1 suggests, highlighting the spot on the map. [“They had droids. They might have a replacement part for my broken sensor.”]

“Sounds like a plan.”

She wraps her scarf and cloak around herself tight, waits for BD-1 to switch the lights back off and hop into her bag, makes sure he’s comfortable, picks up her bat, then heads out into the freezing air. It stings her nose and makes her eyes water, washing away the last vestiges of weariness from her bones, and she pauses to check the stars before setting off at a jog.

Night has always been Rey’s favourite time. A relief from the relentless heat clogging up the air and the ground, soothing the irritated patches of skin and blisters filling out the lines of her palms and feet. And it’s a good kind of quiet—the kind that comes without the weight of expectation. Where she can rest and simply _be_. Existence without consequence.

It isn’t so bad being nothing at night time. 

Morning well and truly arrives a couple of hours later, vibrant reds, regal golds and shy baby blues splashing over the stars, heralding the flurry of movement across the dunes and salt plains. The whining drone of speeders fill the air, matched by the winds constantly shifting the sand against itself. Behemoths roil in the dirt underneath, awoken by the constant beat of footsteps, silently appraising their next meal while Ripper-raptors circle the skies waiting for the leftover bones. The same as yesterday. The same tomorrow.

Oblivious to it all, Rey and BD-1 huddle alone together over a door. It’s deep and dark, and Rey is glad for BD-1’s light, even if it blinds her when he accidentally points his head in her direction.

“Ow, don’t do that,” she snorts, nudging him playfully. He jump-kicks her in response. It feels a little like getting nudged by an angry pebble. “Okay, okay, you win. You can open the door and I’ll look for somewhere to tie my rope off.”

The thing about the door, after all, is that it’s on the floor. It isn’t supposed to be on the floor, but it isn’t uncommon for ships to crash the wrong way up and leave doors in strange places. Rey’s been living on the wall of an AT-AT for months, after all. She finds a hefty looking pipe that doesn’t budge no matter how much she pulls and pushes on it, shifts to the side to let BD-1 watch and knots the rope around it. Before they descend, they both peer into the blackness, a shiver racing down through Rey’s muscles.

She shakes herself with a huff. “At least it’s a room, not a corridor. See anything interesting?”

[“I think it’s some kind of engineering room,”] BD-1 chirps, white and blue flashing in tandem as his scanner and torch shine down. In the strobe lighting, Rey catches sight of a loose cable hanging down from the wall, or the ceiling… from the side that _would’ve_ been the ceiling in the right orientation. BD-1 sees it too. [“We should be careful of that. Power’s still coming in from somewhere.”] 

Rey wrinkles her nose up because getting shocked is _not nice_. “Will do.”

The rope is a recent addition to their tools, and Rey’s still getting the hang of sliding down it, but she manages without crashing into the floor—wall—and doesn’t get rope burn this time, so she counts that as a win. BD-1 angles his head around, and she’s surprised to find how big the room is. The angle of the door hid most of it from sight. A series of cylinders rise up from one wall—the floor—whatever—their internals rusted and dusty. Panels and screens fill out half the area beneath their feet, the rest dedicated to some kind of tubing, all of it that dull, uniform, Empire grey. In the corner, behind the low hanging cable, there’s a slumped figure, lifeless and wreathed in shadow.

Rey looks away, uneasy without quite knowing why. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, BeeDee.”

[“You do?”]

“Yeah. Look, maybe we should just—”

She’s interrupted by the scrape of metal coming from the other side of the room. Discomfort turns to dread, and when she looks back, it’s to find that the figure is _getting to its feet_.

“Why does this always happen when I climb down somewhere?” she whispers.

[“Forget that! _Run!_ ”]

It’s BD-1 who screeches it but it’s in the voice Rey hears it, panic roaring to life beneath her breastbone and sparking her into action. She leaps for the rope. BD-1 is still on her shoulder, keeping his balance while she frantically scrambles upwards. The groaning creak of deteriorating metal wrenches closer and closer with every inch upwards she manages, and BD-1 is yelling loud enough to go ultrasonic and the voice won’t stop shouting and she _isn’t climbing fast enough_ —

The hand that closes around her ankle is so completely unexpected her fingers spasm and open of their own accord. She plummets down, crying out as the metallic fingers instantly tighten enough to bend bone. There’s no crack. Instead, the thing whips her around and lets go, sending her crashing into the ground. Something in her shoulder pops—resets instantly. She can’t breathe through the pain of it. Reality swims in and out in a series of bright lights, colours she’s never seen before spreading across her vision. Blindly, she gropes for her bat, feels the weight of it settle into her good hand, and she shoves herself backwards until a collision rattles her skull and knocks the world back into shape.

Exposed wiring is what she sees first. The low hanging cable. Behind that, the strobing is back, flash points of information searing into her vision. BD-1 scurrying around another droid—a _huge_ droid, one filled in with black plating, built to the same design as a human but wider and taller, wires peeking out like bare veins, two glowing eyes a constant fixture in the dark.

“BeeDee,” she calls weakly, pressing against the wall and sliding up it. Muscles trembling, sinews snapping, hand holding the bat through instinct and little else.

Her voice draws the attention of the droid. BD-1 screeches and charges against it as it turns and begins marching towards her, sparks spitting from its mouth like broken teeth. The droid pauses long enough to kick BD-1 to the side, plunging the room into total darkness, and Rey can’t scream when her throat closes over first because—

This is it.

This is every nightmare come true.

Alone in the dark with the monsters coming to tear her apart.

And—

And—

Light explodes right in front of her, breaking her paralysis, sending air into her lungs in great heaving gasps. BD-1 is in front of her, but so is the other droid, a looming shadow raining lightning that snips and burns at her skin. She sees it look down at BD-1, whole head tilted forward, and she sees it lift a foot while BD-1— _her_ droid—screams in wordless defiance.

Risking everything for her.

And it—

_And—_

It’s simple. Instant. Unconditional and without thought. Rey reaches, every fibre of her being flaring to life, a supernova surging up and out from deep inside, and for one singular moment, the voice doesn’t tell her to run.

It tells her to _push_.

Her hand thrusts outwards. Everything narrows down to a point, an outline of the droid imprinted into her atoms, and with everything that makes her who she is, right at the heart of her, Rey _shoves_ it back.

It’s too far away. Her palm never makes contact. But something else _does,_ something shifts and realigns and _snaps_ , and instead of bringing its foot down on BD-1, the droid jerks all the way back. Stumbles. Falls. Tangles into the loose cable and _shudders,_ and Rey drops her bat and grabs BD-1, hurling herself to the side as electricity rends through metal in sparks and pops that cascade down in fractal patterns, filling her nose with ozone and melting metal.

The droid frantically reaches for the cable, silent in its chaotic movements, seizing once, twice—

And in a final burst of acid bright orange, the head pops off and clatters away into the dark, the body crumpling, twitching frantically before finally falling still.

Rey absolutely does not move. Barely breathes, heart thumping erratically in her chest, everything pulled taut, stretched thin and _breaking_. If she so much as twitches it’s all going to fall apart. It’s too late to make it better. Just like all the starships littering Jakku—Rey’s losing air and she’s going to crash.

Not yet. Not _here._

In the end, BD-1 sums it up rather well, a feeble series of beeps that sound exactly the way Rey feels.

[“Holy fucking shit.”]

It almost makes her laugh. Or maybe cry. She never finds out which. But she does manage to push BD-1 away from her before she’s violently sick.

_—_

_My Rey is not okay._

_We make it out of the Star Destroyer and across the sand and back to where we sleep, but my Rey is silent the entire time and her vitals are all over the place. I know what’s happening. I recognise the signs. I’ve never seen it happen to my Rey before, but it must have if she can hold it off so long._

_My Cal said it’s the kind of thing that only comes with practice._

_When I’m let out of the bag and we are_ safe _, I turn to my Rey and watch as she folds against the wall and curls inwards. Her hands are clenched around her shins, chest spasming in and out. Eyes squeezed shut and jaw shuddering. There is nothing I know that will make it stop._

_So, I begin to count._

[“One… two… three… four… five…”]

_Slow and clear, but soft as well._

[“Five… four… three… two… one…”]

_I keep the rhythm, back and forth, up and down, seeing her understand even in her panic and trying to breathe in time. It takes a while, but that’s alright. I don’t need her to be okay quickly. She will be eventually, and I’ll be waiting for her when she is._

_Little by little, her body eases, her eyes opening and staring at nothing in particular. Not quite crying. Not quite anything else either._

_“Th-thanks, BeeDee,” she whispers, voice cracking. “I’m okay, now. I’m okay.”_

[“No, you aren’t,”] _I tell her, because I don’t want her to pretend or smile that strange smile that hurts her._ [“But you will be.”]

_“That’d be nice,” she croaks and lowers her forehead against her knees. They shake. I press into her side, and I stay there for as long as it takes for her sobs to die down._

_Later, much later, I finally tell her what I saw. We’re sitting beside the leg of the AT-AT as the sun goes down and my Rey has managed to eat something. Mostly she’s been drinking water, though, which is better than nothing. Her vitals are steadier, and I’ve given her another Stim for her swollen ankle and damaged shoulder, but she should still wait a couple of days before putting strain on either. We have enough food and charge, and my broken sensor can wait._

_She argues, and it’s then I know she really is okay._

_My Rey is more stubborn than my Cal._

[“There’s something I need to tell you,”] _I say, interrupting her latest attempt to convince me to let her go scavenging tomorrow. She stops and tilts her head at me, frowning._

_“Oh, alright. What is it?”_

_It’s safe now. There’s nobody safer in the galaxy to tell, even if the Empire is gone and it was a Jedi who defeated it and Force-sensitives aren’t hunted anymore. I don’t know those people._

_I know my Rey._

[“My Cal is a Jedi,”] _I explain._ [“He’s a Force-sensitive human. And so are you.”]

_“I’m… what?”_

[“Like Luke Skywalker.”] _My Rey just keeps staring at me, but I know what I saw. I’ve seen my Cal do it hundreds of times before against the exact same security droids._ [“In the Star Destroyer, you pushed the droid back using the Force. It’s what my Cal can do, and so many other things as well, like pulling things towards him and slowing things down, and he can sense memories from certain objects, memories that aren’t _his_.”] _She flinches, winces at the pitch of my voice. I do my best to slow down. It’s hard._ [“Only people with a strong connection to the Force can do things like that. You’re like him. You could be a Jedi, too.]

_“I…” My Rey doesn’t manage anything past that one syllable. She’s looking at her hands, curling her fingers inwards and out. “I don’t know what happened.”_

[“It was the Force. Believe me.”]

 _“I do, I do believe you, but I’m… I can’t… I’m_ not _—” She stops suddenly. “Wait, he… you said he can touch an object and see memories that aren’t his?”_

[“He said it’s called Psychometry. I think he was born with it, though. Not everyone can do it.”]

 _“What if… what if_ I _can do it?”_

 _For a moment, I think she’s misunderstood. But the expression on her face is rapidly changing from stubborn disbelief to shocked understanding, and I realise she’s asking because she already_ knows _._

[“… I think that’s proof of what I’m saying.”] _I nudge her with my foot._ [“Is _that_ what you’re doing when you get all distracted? I thought you just had a really bad attention span.”]

_“Wait, hang on,” she blurts and waves her hands around her head. “This is great and all, I mean, really fucking fantastic, but…” And she turns to me, all of her excitement disappearing, sliding away like oil. “What does it matter? I don’t know anything about the Force. I really don’t know how I did that.”_

_Which is very true, but I’ve already thought about it._ [“My Cal can teach you.”]

_“… So, it doesn’t matter until we find him,” she summarises flatly._

[“No, no, I mean he can teach you _now_.”]

_And rather than explain with words, I go to all the precious things I still have left, and I show her my Cal._

“We good to go, BeeDee?” _my Cal asks through the projection, hopping from foot to foot, a nervous grin in place._ “Okay, good, awesome. Uh, hey there! You might not know me, so, my name’s Cal Kestis, and I’m a Jedi-Knight. If you’re watching this, hopefully you’re Force-sensitive too, because that’s sort of the whole point of it.” _His face sobers, his hand running through his hair._ “I… right, okay. Whoever you are, you’re probably watching this because you need to learn how to use the Force. I’m here to teach you. It’s not the best way to do it, but with the Empire being, y’know… the _Empire_ , there’s no way I can justify putting kids in danger by being there in person. For now, this is the best I can do.” _He perks up again, clapping his hands together in a solid smack._ “So, let’s get started.”

_I end the recording there. There’s a lot more to go, but I want to hear what my Rey has to say._

_“He recorded lessons?” she asks, puzzled. Holding back hope._

[“It was too dangerous to restore the Jedi Temple with the Empire in power, so we came up with this as a contingency.”] _I don’t say it, but I have no idea when we did this. My Cal is a little older than most memories, but when I try to work it out—_

[Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable]

_Stupid thing._

_Rey is quiet afterwards, contemplating the empty spot where my Cal disappeared. She sits with her legs crossed, head tilted back to watch the stars flicker into existence. Deeper in thought than any nine-year old has a right to be. She is so very, very small, but when she comes back to me, her face is set and her eyes are ferroceramic._

_“It’ll help us, won’t it?” she asks. “It’ll help us find Cal and my parents.”_

_I nod as fast as my processors will let me._ [“It’ll keep you safe, too. It’ll make you stronger than almost anybody.”]

_My Rey grins. “As strong as Luke Skywalker?” she asks, and it’s said like a joke, but she meets my gaze dead on, unwavering._

_She means it._

[“Maybe not _that_ strong.”]

_“Hey, you just watch me. I’ll get stronger than everyone.” I can see how much she means it out of every bright corner of her being. Something dangerously close to confidence is flickering in those hazel eyes. “Strong enough to save an entire galaxy.”_

_And I believe her._

_Energy rattles through my wiring, and I jump and spin and sing._ [“I guess that’s what we’re doing tomorrow,”] _I trill, entirely, rightfully smug. My Rey just laughs and pulls me close._

_It was always an easy decision to make, in the end, and I know my Cal would do the same thing if he were here. I’m small and I’m a little broken, but so is most everyone, and I can still find a way to be kind. So, while she is busy caring for me, I will do the same for her._

_I don’t think my Rey cares for herself very much at all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. That was dramatic. 
> 
> Gonna point out another tag I updated, that little 'unreliable narrator' one. Rey and BD-1 have problems. Not that it's their fault, just keep it in mind as we go forward. Opinions are being had. They will continue to be had.
> 
> I love writing from BD-1's perspective so fricking much by the way. Tiny little boi ready to throw down, more at 11.
> 
> Less happy, but I have a headcanon Cal has panic attacks. S'why BD-1 knows what's happening to Rey.
> 
> Also WOW do I hate the security droids in Fallen Order. I worked out how to deal with the spiders but for some reason the droids always smack the crap out of Cal. I swear it's not on purpose. 
> 
> Speaking of, I'm off to try and beat grand master difficulty so I'll stop scanning this chapter for mistakes because I'm losing my ability to read. Don't read the same piece of writing ten times in a row guys. It does strange things.
> 
> Let me know what you think! Comments, questions, curiosities, kudos - all welcome here.


	3. A Shattered Visage Lies Beyond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooft, this chapter did not want to be written. Exposition yo. Gotta get through it somehow. Also some big angst out of nowhere but nobody actually gets hurt. You'll see.
> 
> All holograms we see of Cal and crew are made up by me-though the toilet humour is pulled from a conversation that happens in game.
> 
> OH, I made a mistake last chapter by the way. For some reason I wrote Rey had been living in the AT-AT for three years?? She hasn't. Ironically, you are going to start noticing funky things happening with her age, but it'll be explained in due course. That day counter actually does have a purpose.
> 
> P.S. creative liberties are taken. Don't like don't read.

“… So, let’s get started. You’ll need to be physically prepared, so I’ve—”

“Hang on, Cal. Shouldn’t you start by explaining what the Force actually is?”

In the cool interior of the AT-AT, Rey watches Cal’s image distort, twist, re-emerge as a woman. She’s sitting at a table, long legs crossed, arms folded loosely. Lithe, dark-skinned with even darker eyes, hair cut short and curled tightly against her head. She isn’t old, but she’s definitely older than Cal. So, this must be Cere.

Cere turns her gaze towards the camera and quickly raises a hand over her face. “BeeDee, we talked about this,” she says sternly. “You’re only supposed to film Cal.”

BD-1 beeps an apology off-screen and swings back to Cal. He’s built similarly to his mentor, the same flexible lines in his muscles, but he’s broader too. Sturdier. Hair an odd shade of red he keeps swept back from his face, green eyes filled with a strange kind of intensity even as he gazes thoughtfully in Cere’s direction. Like there’s fire inside, flickering beneath the surface, ready to lend its strength even if everything else fails.

“Y’know, you could probably explain it better than me. You’re the one who’s taught this stuff before.”

“And you’re the one who wanted to do this, Cal,” Cere says. Cal’s image flickers again, like BD-1 is struggling to keep his attention on the red-head. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re perfectly aware of what the Force is.”

Cal grins, abashed, and maybe a little pleased. “Yeah, of course I do. I’ve just… never had to explain it out loud before.”

Rey glances at BD-1, _her_ BD-1, the BD-1 projecting this recording into the middle of the room while she sits to the side and watches. Her droid keeps the projection rolling, watching intently. Hungrily. Sensor zooming in and out on Cal.

It makes her wonder how many times he’s played this recording inside his own head.

She doesn’t bother asking him to skip forward.

“Well, how did your master explain it to you?” Cere asks, soft and encouraging.

Cal’s shoulders visibly raise before rounding out, expression clearing of the sudden strain pulling his muscles taught. “The Force surrounds us and connects us. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

“Is this how Jedi see the Force?” A new voice enters, blinking Rey out of her awed attention. “Strange.”

Cal looks just as put-out. “What d’you mean ‘strange’?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I meant ‘wrong’.” Rey smacks a hand over her mouth to muffle her giggles as the holo switches to the new arrival. A blond woman, similar to Cal’s age, streaks of black striking across her features and adding a hard edge to the soft curves of her face. Merrin. She notices BD-1’s attention and raises an eyebrow. “You are filming the wrong person again.”

In the recording, BD-1 boops sadly. [“I look at people when they talk. That isn’t wrong, is it?”]

“Of course not, little one,” Merrin replies with a fond smile. “Perhaps it would be best if Cal does this alone—after I correct his teachings.”

“You don’t have to correct me—”

“I understand you are teaching Force-sensitives as a Jedi would, but would it not be better to explain the Force as it is?” Merrin asks, and there’s something fierce in her voice Rey recognises. Something that always turns angry and defensive when confronted. “My sisters did not die to be forgotten.”

There’s a long, guilty pause. “Right… sorry, Merrin.”

Merrin tilts her head, eyes soft. “It is okay, Cal.”

Cal’s image returns to reveal him scrubbing his hands through his hair. “I’m going to have to write this stuff down,” he mutters. “And you’re right about doing this privately. As much as I enjoy you all chiming in, it’s not exactly a clear way of getting across information,” he adds, tone as dry as Jakku. “May as well stop recording, BeeDee, no point in—”

He's interrupted, _again_ , by the unmistakable sound of a door slamming. It’s loud enough to make Rey jump, her brow rising as a short, grey-skinned xeno fills out the projection, two of his hands clapped over his nose, the other two pointing accusingly into the room.

“Who the kark clogged the toilet _again_!?”

“ _Greez!_ ”

“It was _somebody_. There’s five of use on this ship and I know it wasn’t me, and it _definitely_ wasn’t the droid, so which one of you—”

“BeeDee cut, _cut_ —”

Rey’s laughing so hard it takes her a few minutes to remember how to speak. “What was _that_?” she wheezes, wiping tears from her eyes. “That’s not the Force, is it?”

Which is such a stupid thing to say it just sets her off again.

[“Humans seem to enjoy toilet humour,”] BD-1 explains cheerily, hopping around her as she slowly gets her breathing under control. [“I thought you’d find it funny, and I was right!”]

“Yeah, you were, BeeDee,” Rey says, patting his head as he makes another loop around her cross-legged form. “But I don’t suppose we could get to the actual learning part now?”

The light gleams off BD-1’s chassis, filtered through the blanket and casting a green tempered glow around the room, shining with the full force of the midday sun. Rey feels that same energy in her bones. An eruption of star fire reaching all the way from the roots of her hair down to her toe capillaries. Because she’s going to learn to be a _Jedi_.

In the back of her eyes and the ache in her shoulder and ankle, she’s still exhausted from yesterday’s events. BD-1 hadn’t woken her until well into the morning, something she’s quietly grateful for given how long it took her to fall asleep. The droid’s revelations had upended so much of what she thought about the universe that it took hours for her mind to quiet down enough to rest—even without her constantly imagining metal-coated hands reaching for her out of the darkness. The security droid’s ghost will leave her eventually. The nightmares always do, and Rey knows most of them well enough to calm them whenever they come back.

But this? What the hell is she supposed to do with _this_?

The way people talk about the Force is the same way they talk about fairy tales. Or horror stories, depending on the teller. Keep-quiet-and-do-what-you’re-told-or-the-Sith-will-come-back-to-destroy-everything, kind of thing. It’s what Rey’s been told her entire life, only with magical powers tacked on to the end. Because that’s what the Force always felt like: magic. Fun to think about, but not _real_. And while she likes the stories about Luke Skywalker, she never thought the man actually _existed_. At least, not the way he’s described. One man taking down the Empire? How could that be true when the evidence of the real battle lies in the wrecked starships and buried bodies and dead whispers all across Jakku?

She’s seen enough of their memories to know there was no triumphant victory. No easy, happily ever after. Those people died scared and angry and alone, and most of them died screaming, too. There isn’t a power in existence that can change that. There’s no point in pretending there could be.

Until she used that very power to save BD-1. That feeling that filled her, that _certainty_ , and the _voice_ —

In tandem and intangible—

Connection and correction—

Power, yes, but something so much simpler too. Like everything was in its rightful place, pulled together in a matter as basic as gravity.

Knowing Cal the way she does through BD-1, she thinks she might understand better now. Cal is a person to her in a way Luke Skywalker just can’t be, and she knows the man far better than she knows what he did. If Cal could stop people dying, that’s what he would choose—every time. So maybe the Force can’t stop wars or end an Empire by itself, maybe it can’t make it so slavery never happened and children always grow up with their parents and nobody dies nobody dies nobody ever, _ever_ dies.

But it can save someone, and maybe—

(Maybe it’s why her parents left her behind.)

[“Are you ready?”] BD-1 asks once he’s settled, sitting near enough to touch.

_You’ll have to be_.

Rey nods sharply. “I’m ready.”

Cal returns in a burst of cerulean blue buzzing inside and around his body. He’s wearing different clothes, looking a little more harried than the previous recording, but no less resolved. Sitting as he is, legs crossed and facing her, it really does feel like he’s actually _here_. Speaking to her directly. “Alright. Lesson one. Hopefully without interruptions this time.” He murmurs the last part under his breath, lips twitching like he’s trying not to laugh. He shakes himself and straightens his posture. “I’m going to teach you how to use the Force, but to do that, you need to know exactly what the Force is.”

Rey settles her notebook comfortably across one knee and tightens her grip on her pen. It’s shaking, slightly.

“When people talk about the Force, they usually focus on what it can do, not what it is. I’m sure you’ll have heard stories about moving things with your mind, doing cool tricks with lightsabres, which… well, yeah, you can do that.” Cal grins, excitement shining in his eyes. “But the Force isn’t a thing you can do. It’s integral to the very fabric of our universe.”

“Integral?” Rey asks, remembering at the last moment to turn to BD-1.

[“Innate/essential/fundamental,”] BD-1 answers, pausing the recording. Rey loves that. He never thinks anything she asks is stupid, and he always knows the best way to explain things so they’ll make sense to her ever-distracted mind. [“It means the universe couldn’t exist the way we know it if the Force didn’t exist.”]

“Whoa,” Rey mutters, eyes widening as the implications hit her. “So you and me wouldn’t even be here?”

[“Probably not. And even if there was some version of us, they’d be so different it’s doubtful we’d even be able to recognise them.”]

“ _Whoa_.” BD-1 mimics her amazement in little happy bounces and beeps as she writes that down—alongside the definition of ‘integral’. It’s not the right notebook for new words, but she’s too engrossed to care. “Let’s keep going.”

And Cal continues to speak. “The Force, in its most basic form, is energy generated by all living things, and it connects them together, too. Earth, water, sky, the air you breathe, the things you eat, all the people and animals and plants you’ll ever see— _everything_ contains and creates this energy. Most never notice it. In fact, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t believe it really exists.” Rey grins guiltily, even though Cal can’t actually see her. “But people like us, people who are sensitive to the Force, we can _feel_ it. And, with enough practice, we can begin to manipulate it too.”

Cal raises his hand up to the side of the head. He twitches it back—a minute movement Rey nearly misses—and a pebble flies into view out of nowhere and smacks straight into his waiting palm.

“Telekinesis is the most basic form of manipulation, and the most well-known,” Cal says casually, as if he didn’t just summon a rock to him using only his mind. “The stronger your connection with the Force, the easier it becomes, and you’ll begin to access other abilities as well.”

Rey leans forward, eyes darting around the edges of the hologram.

“But we’ll get into those later.”

She slumps.

“Right now, the most important thing is that you understand the Force. See, there are two sides to it, a constant dichotomy that must always remain in balance.”

“Dichotomy?” she echoes.

[“Different/opposing/contrasting,”] BD-1 explains. [“My Cal’s talking about the Light and Dark sides of the Force.”]

“Light and Dark sides? What?”

[“Watch.”]

Rey frowns and does as she’s told, unsettled by BD-1’s uncharacteristic seriousness.

“As a Jedi, I was trained to draw my power from the Light side of the Force.” Cal rests his empty hand on his knee, palm facing skyward, fingers lax. “This side is defined by serenity, compassion and peace. We use it to defend, never to harm, and our goal is to protect the balance of nature and all living beings.” He moves his other hand now, tightening his fingers into a fist ready to strike. “But there’s the Dark side too, defined by chaos, hatred and passion. It’s the Sith who draw their power from the Dark, using it to corrupt, control, and further their own selfish desires.”

“Wait.” Rey holds up her hands to signal a pause. “Hold on, I’m confused. What’s all this about different sides? How can an energy field have sides?”

BD-1 tilts his head. [“I don’t think it’s as literal as that. Like Cal said, you can’t have one without the other. The problem with Dark side users is they upset the balance because they try to twist the Force into doing what they want.”]

“But isn’t that what you’re doing with the Light side just by using it at all?”

[“… No?”]

Rey grimaces as BD-1’s antennae droop, head folding downwards. “It’s okay if you don’t know, BeeDee. I might just be overcomplicating it anyway.” She rubs a thumb against his plating, twirls her pen around her fingers and eyes Cal’s still image out of the corner of her eye. “C’mon, let’s keep going. Maybe Cal already answered what I’m confused about.”

BD-1 nods with his whole body, and Rey snorts as Cal’s image briefly clips into the floor from the waist down. [“Oops.”]

“Everyone has emotions,” Cal says as he rises back up. “But if you lose yourself inside of them, the Dark side will use that to tempt you. And it will twist everything you are until there’s nothing left.” He grimaces, freckles colliding like broken constellations. “There _are_ people who can use the Dark side without succumbing to it, but… they’re extremely rare. And I’m not here to teach you that.” He settles himself so both palms are resting open on his calves, the pebble sitting innocently, unchanged. “That’s the choice you have to make now. Because from here on out, you’ll have to keep making it, over and over. Even when it’s difficult. Even when doing something else or doing nothing would be so much easier, you have to keep hold of who you are. If you’re seeing this recording, I trust you’ll be able to stay safe. But it’s up to you whether you continue from here. Because once you start, there’s no turning back.”

He tilts his palm. The pebble drifts into the space above his ankles, revolving slowly. “This training will exhaust you in ways you didn’t know existed. You’re going to be using muscles you never have before, and they’re going to hurt. You’re constantly going to feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. For a long time, training is going to be your whole life, and I won’t be surprised if you want to give up when it gets too hard.”

Rey stays still, stays silent, sensing a _but_ threading through her bones.

“But it’ll be worth every second, I can promise you that,” Cal continues with the biggest grin she’s ever seen. “And if you believe you can handle it, I do too.”

He holds her gaze for a few more seconds, then lowers his eyes, nods once, and disappears.

“… Oh,” Rey says faintly, feeling floaty and warm and entirely bereft of words.

[“I do understand what he’s trying to tell you about the Light and the Dark,”] BD-1 pipes up, hopping round so he can face her properly. She blinks the heat from her eyes and pays attention. [“It’s… well, it’s like Cal said. It’s hard to explain. It’s one of those things that once you know how it works, you can’t really explain it to somebody else.”]

“Right,” Rey says, swiping the end of her pen up and down the scribbles she managed to get down, wishing her ankle could hold her weight without damaging it more. It’s so hard to align her thoughts when they’re moving too fast for her to keep up with. “Right. Okay. So, there’s a Light side and a Dark side. And the Dark side—what, it feeds off emotion?”

[“Not _all_ emotion. You’re a living being, you can’t just turn off what you feel. It’s when they overwhelm your ability to think. It’s when—“] BD-1 bolts upright, like a thought just occurred. [“It’s when they make you stop caring about anything else. Like if you shout at someone when you’re angry, you don’t care if it hurts them or scares them.”]

“You only care that you’re angry and you want them to know it,” Rey continues, stopping her pen in between the lines describing _Light_ and _Dark_. “And the angrier you get, the more you shout. And it just gets harder and harder to stop being angry.”

She curls her empty palm into a fist like Cal’s, watches her knuckles turn white, feels the indents her nails leave behind. She’s angry, isn’t she? She’s angry at Cal, at Plutt, at Jakku, at the scavengers who steal and break and take, at the New Republic for letting this happen, at the Sith for starting a war in the first place and leaving all those bodies to rot in the sand forever, at her parents for _abandoning her_ —

And she thinks about the darkness inside of her and how it’s always been there, right from the moment she woke up. Her heart sinks into the midst of it.

“BeeDee… you said the Emperor wanted to kill all of the Jedi,” she whispers. “Why was that?”

[“Because he was afraid of them.”] BD-1 replies simply. [“He was afraid that they’d stop him. I guess he was right.”]

“Kind of like how Plutt is afraid of us?”

BD-1 stares at her, leaning back to the edges of his balance. [“What d’you mean?”]

“That’s why he makes us live like this, right?” Rey says, gesturing around them, because she’s starting to see a pattern she doesn’t think Cal intended to show but revealed anyway. “All the—all the slaves he owns, he treats us like this because he’s afraid we’d stop him if we were strong enough to. Then he wouldn’t have any power at all.”

[“Having power means having control,”] BD-1 says hesitantly. [“People don’t know what will happen to them without it.”]

“And that makes them afraid,” Rey repeats because she _knows_. The brand on her back itches. “That’s why people destroy things they don’t understand.”

_Here are the monsters, little girl. Keep me secret keep me safe keep me here, hold me, use me, know me, it’s time to run but where to?_

_Away?_

_Or towards?_

Rey’s never wanted to hurt something just because she doesn’t understand it, but she’s never really been a person, either. And if the alternative is being afraid, if that makes her existence _wrong,_ she’s fine with that.

“I never want to be like him,” Rey says, loosening her fist and watching the blood flow back into her fingers in bright, bright red. She raises her eyes and makes a promise that echoes all the way down into the emptiness. “I never want to hurt anyone like that. If I’m going to use the Force, I want to use it to help people.”

[“I didn’t think it’d be a very hard choice.”]

Rey rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning, face hot from this simple gift of esteem. “No turning back now. Let’s keep going forward.”

—

The next recording, thankfully, ends with Rey having something to do afterwards. As interesting as it is listening to Cal—and have another adult talk to her without threatening bodily harm in the middle of their conversation—she isn’t used to sitting still for such long periods of time. It makes her think of sandstorms, their wailing ferocity as she covers the entrance with anything she can find, huddled alone in her blanket as her food and water run low and all she can do is hope she won’t be buried at the end of it. She knows how to wait. That doesn’t mean she _likes_ it.

To be honest, she still isn’t entirely sure she understands the whole Light and Dark thing either. Using power to do bad things, _yeah_ , she knows that. The difficulty lies in getting her head around the dichotomy. If you only ever use one side, how is there supposed to be balance? The sun can’t rise if the moon doesn’t set first. So, the Dark has to exist—just not be used? But what happens if there’s too much Light? Doesn’t that skew the balance too?

Maybe the Jedi never lived on desert planets.

Still, Rey’s aware she’s only started learning, and while she won’t be afraid, that doesn’t mean she’s going to mess around with something she doesn’t understand. She’ll keep her hands close and eyes open, and when she knows what the scrap is and how it works, _that’s_ when she’ll use it. If it’s too dangerous, she’ll leave it alone for good.

[“You’re thinking too much.”]

“It’s sort of how I’ve stayed alive this long,” Rey replies blithely, then cracks open an eye. “Sorry. You’re right. It’s hard to turn it all off.”

[“It’s okay to think. The point of meditation is to stop yourself trying to control it. Let thoughts come and go as they please, focus on the rhythm of your breathing. It’s probably okay if you don’t feel the Force on your first try.”]

Rey sighs and closes her eye, settles herself more comfortably. Cal had sat with his knees bent beneath him, resting on the balls of his feet, but Rey’s ankle won’t abide by that, so she’s still cross-legged. Her hands are relaxed against her calves, her shoulders rounded and her back straight as she tries to sense everything Cal described. Her first attempt at meditation.

Which is really just a fancy word for sitting still.

“I _am_ trying,” she mumbles a couple minutes later, after the sixth time BD-1 has had to poke her to stop her from fidgeting. “I can sense everything I usually do, but I don’t feel anything beyond that. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be searching for.”

[“Well, maybe you need to look at it differently?”]

Rey chews on her lower lip and goes over everything she’s learned so far. The Force is alive in its own way, Cal had said as much. So it must want something. She has to do this a certain way, one that works with the Force, not against it. But what does an omnipresent energy want? What did she give it before?

She pushes past the chill pervading the memories of yesterday, remembers that singular point of clarity when the galaxy split wide open and anything seemed possible. Remembers knowing BD-1 was going to die and realising she _couldn’t let that happen_. How the energy had come to her aid with barely a thought in between.

And every time she let the whispers through, listened to their fears and loves, losses and joy, saw quiet moments shared and the sacrifices willingly made along the way. So vibrant. Still so _alive_. Almost burning from the intensity of it.

And even further back, so far away she almost forgot it completely. That first day she went out with Mashra, when she was alone in the dark, climbing deeper and deeper into that metal coffin, convinced there was _nothing_ else out there. Just her, disconnected, isolated, trapped forever in the bowels of a long-dead monster. Remembers stepping forward—no, back— _no_ , somewhere _beyond_ herself, tethering her mind to the rest of existence even as her senses found it trickling away.

Except… she never knew how to do any of those things. She never even really _tried_ to. She just did it.

So maybe that’s the answer. Maybe to connect with the Force, you have to let it come to you.

At the very least, it’s something she hasn’t tried already. She shifts one more time, lets the twinges in her ankle and shoulder fade away, and rather than reaching for anything, she focusses on her breathing like BD-1 told her too.

It starts slowly, which is why she doesn’t realise what’s happening until she’s too deep to mistake it for anything else. Her heartbeat is thumping gently in her ears, tiny vibrations running through her veins. Below her nose, the air displaces with every breath in, every breath out, swirling around her, mixing with the gentle breeze carrying dust and sand into the room. BD-1 sits at her side silently, his outline imprinting itself into her thoughts, carrying the scent of loose wires and sparking mouths, fractal shapes spiralling outwards as he twitches and thinks and _lives_.

And it clicks. The connection she’d been searching for draws itself up willingly, pressing at her skin, vibrating in the space between atoms. Eager, almost _playful_. It flows through her, a constant motion riding in time to the turn of the earth beneath and the infinite sky above, bristling along the spinebarrels BD-1 is always so fascinated by, racing across the dunes to another as it crumbles into dust, passing along the sands and all the creatures burrowed inside, reaching the pulsing lifeblood of the scavengers, twirling around the bones buried beneath their feet. Circulating, bumping, clinging, spinning round and round. Connecting everything in a never-ending cycle.

With a jolt, she realises she _knows_ this. The energy sings in greeting, welcoming her into awareness with a camaraderie that isn’t in any way new—almost as if it’s been _waiting_ for her. Buried instinct turned into tangible thought, eliciting a tug deep in her chest, just below her heart, raw and untested but brimming with strength. Hiding in calcium. Firing through carbon. Stimulating synapses. A constant push and pull keeping every part alive as something so much bigger than just her.

Saying a friendly hello.

_The balance in eternity._

Rey opens her eyes and stares at nothing for a few moments, bewildered by the comment, distracted out of her trance. “I think… I think I felt it,” she says, flexing her limbs experimentally. It hasn’t gone away yet—if anything, it’s getting stronger. She shakes her head back and forth, trying to clear the bright spots in her vision.

[“My Rey? Are you okay?”]

“I think so,” she replies slowly, listening to the reverberation in her voice, wondering at the energy trembling along her muscles. “It’s just—it’s a lot. BeeDee, it’s in _everything_.”

[“You felt it!?”]

“Yeah! Yeah, I—”

There’s no warning. No creeping unease. No sense of danger.

One moment she’s sitting listening to the universe, breathing a little too hard, fingers clenched into the soft skin of her calves, the next—

The void opens, the precipice _tilts_ —

_—the gentle strum of music and smiles sewn from supernovas, brighter than all the stars in the galaxy, this is right, this is what we keep, this is what we come back to—_

_—Always—_

(The Force reaches out.)

(The Dark answers with a dream.)

—

_“Rey… I want you to join me.”_

_His hand is outstretched, palm facing up. Waiting. The fires across the throne room flicker along his face, moulding shadows around hard curves and harder lines, igniting the scar she gave him, drawing blood that drips down his chin and soaks the floor beneath their feet. Liquid scarlet that refuses to part beneath their weight._

_Behind her, her friends are dying._

_“You come from nothing. You’re nothing.”_

_It’s strange, how easily she can pick out the voices. His, of course, soft and insistent, sinking so deep the words sound like her own. But ****’s is there too—twisted into a tormented, wailing cry, more animal than human. Echoing ******’s guttural roars. Rising over ***’s agonised grunts. Discordant against ***’s screams. Filling in the space where ***’s silence tears a hole through reality. Killing **** slowly. As real and tortured as BD-1 and *** and ****’s ultrasonic screeching._

_She can’t turn her head. Something holds her body static, unable to help or even acknowledge her friends, trapped staring at the man who’s slaughtering them._

_She thinks his eyes are kind._

_“Join me.”_

_Her hand moves outside of her control. The bloody floor ripples, surges, spirals around their legs and clings as it rises. She’s straining to reach, muscle fibres snapping and bones creaking, but she’s being sucked down, dissolving amidst the flood, she can’t—_

_“Please,” the man whispers and chokes as blood spills out his mouth, ripping him apart from the inside out._

_She’s still reaching when it rises high enough to swallow her whole._

_And_

_She_

_**Falls**._

_Lands on her feet in a hangar shattered by the force of her impact._

_She stumbles, drunk under the weight of mobility, disoriented by quicksilver panels morphing into rusted walls smothered by vines and foliage, the cavernous space stretching out around her to ludicrous proportions. X-Wings lie shattered beside gutted TIE fighters, the sharp tang of laser burns sizzling in the air. Star birds clipped. Suns burnt out._

_It's too quiet. The kind of quiet that drags everything in around it until there’s nothing left of what you are and who you want to be, atoms spreading across the universe because there’s a vacuum and something needs to fill it. She stands in the eye of a blackhole and watches the event horizon crest through the hangar doors. She turns and runs. Finds herself facing the doors again. No matter which way she tries to go it’s there, a burning ring turning the gravity of the stars to its whim, and she exists in the centre, her voiceless yells compressed to nothing._

(I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t—)

_“Where were you?”_

_She stops. Stares at *** in the rugged orange of his flight suit. The fabric is ripped and frayed, his helmet cracked from the top to the shattered visor, eyes splintered into jagged pieces._

_“You were supposed to be here. Where were you?”_

_On his chest, a ring melts against his skin, burning a hole to his heart. She can see it beating._

_“You left us.”_

_Gold ashes drift off his skin, wearing away his body, dragging him back to the abyss. He takes a step towards her. Everywhere she turns, he’s there, walking then running, disintegrating before her even as his hands reach out to—_

_“You should never have come here at all.”_

_Eyes shut._

(I don’t know.)

_Arms thrown up in defence._

(I don’t know.)

_Catching onto the edge of something sharp enough to split skin and she opens her eyes with a gasp, body dangling inside a wrecked Star Destroyer, one hand holding the ledge and all her weight from the endless pit beneath her. Sand rains down, measuring every inch she slips._

_She can’t hold on._

_She’s going to fall._

(I don’t know how to stop myself.)

_She loses her grip—_

_And someone catches her wrist. **** stares down, straining to hold on but—smiling. Always smiling._

_“I won’t mean it when I let go,” he promises._

_Sand burns to glass. Grains and shards falling around them, crusting into their hair and delving into their veins. She flails. He lurches but keeps holding anyway, reaching out for her other hand. She tries to grab it—_

_Blue explodes across her vision, crackling furiously as it burns through the bottom of the ledge right into his stomach. He chokes as the sword of light stabs through him, glass coating his tongue. He’s still smiling even as he slides over the edge and they fall together._

_“But you will.”_

_He shatters and she plummets alone into the dark, screaming._

_She doesn’t want to die here, amongst sand and ruins where no-one will think to look for her, where her death will be forgotten and her existence along with it. Out of the black, voices laugh and roar and plead, and she clutches at her head and covers her ears, but the sound multiplies and bounces back and forth and morphs until it’s coming from everyone she’s ever known. Trapped in the dark and she’s the one that brought them here._

(Please.)

_And a new voice rises from the chasm, silencing all the other noise, creating the very space she falls down. Consonants tearing through her, vowels replacing her thoughts, a command and a guidance that shapes her into something she’s never been and never wanted to be._

_She_

_Does_

_Not_

_Want_

_To_

Die

_Here._

_“Don’t let it die.”_

_Something plunges into her chest. Ice splinters through her heart, arteries, veins. She can’t breathe. She can’t do anything but fall._

_“Let it **burn**.”_

—

She wakes with all the force of a thunderclap, choking on air, thrashing violently. Ashes and sparks bleed across her senses. Lights swirl in her vision, long exposure streaks turning the world into a meaningless blur. It’s so _loud_ , she can still hear them _screaming_ and—

[“R̼̺̐̓̎͢è̘̺̯̖̏̑̆y̡̫̗͉̾͐̽͝! My Rey, are you okay? What happened?”] Loud, afraid, ringed in bright buzzing blue. She blinks starbursts away. [“I don’t know what happened, I… _please_ be okay.”]

_not real not real not real not real_

“Not real,” she repeats aloud, voice ragged as if she’s actually been screaming. Slowly, gravity reorients itself, colours return to their boundaries and her limbs fall to her sides. She spreads her shaking hands across the sand-swept metal beneath her, _where_ and _when_ and _why_ sinking through her overwhelmed synapses.

Her AT-AT. She's lying on the floor of her AT-AT with no idea how she got here. It’s day 1462, and BD-1 is skittering up and down the floor beside her body, beeping himself into a frenzy as the images from her nightmare disintegrate into mismatched pieces of dust.

_I am Rey._

“I’m here, BeeDee,” she manages, coughing to try and clear away the cracks coating her throat. Tensing her trembling stomach muscles, she forces herself upright, grimacing when she finds sweat dried in all the wrong places, burning and freezing her in equal measure. “Eugh, sorry. I’m okay. I’m sorry.”

BD-1 doesn’t answer. Instead, he throws himself into her arms, still beeping his meaningless little beeps, and Rey thinks that if he could, BD-1 would be crying.

“Hey, it’s okay, little one. It was a bad dream, that’s all.”

(Except that’s a lie and Rey doesn’t know why she keeps it. She can feel the Force still, absently realigning after its distention, the remnants of discharge clogging the air around them, drifting away for the rest of the galaxy to pick up. No intent. No purpose. Nothing to follow back to its source.

Rey knows nightmares. That was not _her_ nightmare.

But it was somebody’s.)

[“I don’t know what happened,”] BD-1 jitters. [“You just fell and wouldn’t move and I didn’t know what to _do_.”]

Rey swallows. She’d find it pretty scary if BD-1 stopped moving suddenly too. “Exhaustion, I think. I must have pushed myself too hard after yesterday,” she says, too much filling her head to get it all out. Cal, the Force, the nightmare, the dark—they’re all clattering against each other, the Force a constant hum sinking into everything else. She waits for that hum to drown out the _noise_ , for her skin to stop shaking and her heart to finally calm. “Sorry. It’s my fault. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

[“What happened, though?”] BD-1 asks, tilting his head to look up at her. [“You said you felt something and then you collapsed for fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds and… did you really feel the Force?”]

“I still do, I think,” Rey says, clicking her teeth together, feeling the impact far more vividly than she ever has before. “I’m still getting used to it. It’s… loud. Sorry, give me a second."

BD-1 wiggles tighter against her and Rey keeps holding on. Tries to find all that serenity Cal was talking about in the solid weight of his body, enough to quell her dread and anchor her senses.

And she reaches back into herself.

It’s there. Of course it’s there. But nothing comes from it. The precipice remains as it always has, her memories little more than splintered echoes of the smiles and whispers of two people who meant everything.

Only empty space beyond.

(And maybe something looking back too.)

[“Are you really okay, my Rey?”]

“Yes,” Rey hears herself say, somewhere far away from the rest of the galaxy. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Because being anything else just isn’t an option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huh, wonder what all that was about.
> 
> Anyway, seeing some issues with learning through recordings: inability to ask questions. What could possibly go wrong? These limitations aren't going to be ignored, don't panic. Cal's doing his best. So is Rey, but she's also an eight year old struggling with questions about the fabric of the universe so it might take some time to get attuned.
> 
> BD-1 is here to support.
> 
> Quick note, I wanted to get this chapter posted because I'm coming up on the end of my semester and I'll be going into 'oh god finals' mode soon. Hopefully I'll get a chapter out before then but it might be a couple weeks, just so ya know.
> 
> As always, let me know what you think!


	4. Reach Out, Hold On

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE

Luke Skywalker is not, to put it mildly, a patient man.

He knows he’d still have his right hand if he _was_.

The urge to get out and _do_ has been a part of him since he was a child on Tatooine. It’s taken years to hone it, temper it down to single point of what will work and what won’t, the knowing of when it’s time to move, and time to sit back and let events play out as they will. Steeped in the teachings of his predecessors, a legacy millennia in the making, filtered down through him and his pretend game of patience.

It's easier, sometimes. Right now, it’s _not_.

“Trouble sleeping again, Ben?”

“It’s easier to think up here,” the boy responds quietly, leg swinging where it hangs over the edge of the sheer cliff face stretching hundreds of feet below, the other folded comfortably beneath him. “I didn’t want to bother anyone.”

“So you’ve said,” Luke sighs, dusting shrub and shale from the end of his robes. “Every single time I’ve found you up here. And every single time I’ve reminded you not to come back.”

“I’m sure you could stop me if you really wanted to.”

Bitterness underlies Ben’s voice, bristling through Luke, forcing him to stop and breathe before he snaps. A razor-thin crescent moon grins down at them, glowing vicariously through its reflected light, dripping silver over moss and stone and water. All the way down at the bottom of the cliff, a lake sits silent, smooth, glass-like, reflecting the night sky as if you could sink down into its depths and come out the other side amongst the stars.

Remnants of an old quarry, flooded years ago and left abandoned. Devastatingly beautiful. From this vantage point, Luke can see the tiny shore he occasionally teaches his students. Could step off the edge and plummet all the way to it. Barely three steps across on this tiny plateau, the slope leading up to it dotted with half-grown trees and loose rock, shades of muted red and emerald lost in the dimness. He nearly had a heart attack the first time he found Ben up here after hours of climbing, following his nephew’s signature with a raw desperation and panic he hadn’t felt since Cloud City.

He'd gotten angry then, too. 

There’s more than enough space for the two of them, but rather than tempting fate, Luke sits a little ways back from the edge and pointedly holds out a bottle of water. Condensation sticks to his palm, a welcome relief from the heat of the climb, but he waits, and eventually Ben reaches back and accepts it. The tension doesn’t leave—they’re too attuned to each other for that—but it relaxes back into something familiar enough to be comfortable. A string pulled taut slinking between their fingers.

“I know you can take care of yourself,” Luke murmurs several minutes later. “But I really don’t want to be the one to explain to your mother that you slipped off a cliff and _I_ was the one who let you come here.”

Ben rolls his eyes and his whole head tilts with the motion. “I’d live and she’d get over it.”

“No, she’d blow something up and blame it on _me_.”

“You,” his nephew informs him with more dryness than there is sand in the galaxy, “are being a tiny bit overdramatic.”

“I’m being the perfect amount of dramatic, thank you.”

That finally gets a snort and Ben turns his head, fully showing his face for the first time. Dark bruises curve under his eyes, red lining his sclera and tiredness etched into every line of his young face. He’s smiling that small crooked smile that reminds Luke of Han so much it _aches_ , even worse when he sees the shadowy recesses Ben tries to hide behind it. Twanging down the string like someone reached out and plucked it.

The Force buzzes uneasily. Luke wonders how well it understands the rift spanning the feet and chasms between him and his nephew, grown so wide it could swallow a sun. He sets his jaw and reaches past it—tries not to wonder how many times he’ll have to. Over and over.

“Was it the same dream again?” he asks.

Ben’s smile fades and he drops his gaze to the water bottle. With an absent twitch of his fingers, he twists the water inside into a seamless maelstrom. Eerie in its perfection against the flickering weight of his inner turmoil. Luke watches silently, feels the energy flow smoothly from Ben to the liquid, and makes himself be patient. 

“No,” Ben answers eventually, so quiet Luke feels the vibration in the air more than he hears anything at all. “It was something different this time, but I don’t… It drifts away every time I try to remember it.” A shudder, a bump, a dip, and the water sploshes up against the cap, roiling angrily against the sides of the bottle. Ben lets gravity run its course and mutters, “Wasn’t a fantastic experience, I know that much.”

A sliver of unease twines itself down Luke’s spine. “It’d be a much easier existence if nightmares were pleasant experiences,” he murmurs, carefully scrutinising his nephew’s face. “You really can’t remember?”

“You think I’m lying?” Ben demands, and there it is again, that acerbic quality that always seems to strike exactly the wrong nerve.

“I think I’m asking you a question,” Luke replies shortly.

“I already gave you the answer.”

“Ben, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I just wanted to make sure."

“Really? Then why did you bother coming all the way up here?” The water jerks again, and Ben lets out a harsh sigh before setting the bottle down. Luke keeps staring. Wondering. When he looks up, it’s to find Ben gazing back, eyes as unwavering as Han’s, as piercing as Leia’s. “What aren’t you telling me? What’s wrong?”

Over and over it ends like this. Impatience and uncertainty twisting until they’re snarled. Inseparable. Luke’s feelings becoming Ben’s becoming Luke’s. Luke cares for all his students, but Ben is his _nephew_ , and for better or worse, that _means_ something, no matter how hard Luke tries to push it down and drown it out. It fuses them in a way the Force won’t let go of. As much as Luke can feel Ben’s anger, the dwindling shock of waking up cold and scared, the confusion locked in the interim between reality and what _feels_ real, the lingering fear of an experience that’s _wrong_ but might one day be _true_ —

Ben can feel exactly the same from Luke.

Which is why, more than ever, it’s essential Luke taps down on their familial bond. They’re long past favouritism. This is about Ben’s _future_ , Han and Leia’s _son_ , and it’s not fair for Luke to tell Ben to control these emotions when his own are determined to run rampant.

Luke breathes. Ignores Ben’s growing frustration as the silence stretches out around them. Peace. Serenity. Immoveable and impassable in the hold of the Force, compressed and hidden while Ben continues to spill his thoughts out into the air. Luke raises an eyebrow at him. A muscle pulses in Ben’s jaw and he breaks Luke’s gaze, skin pale as snow, eyes dark as thunderclouds. His leg keeps swinging a metronome beat to the rhythm of his pulse.

“Your mom’s been nudging me for the past hour or so,” Luke admits conversationally, watching the immediate perk to Ben’s posture. “I came up to see if you wanted to talk to her.” 

“You could have opened with that,” Ben grumbles.

“And miss out on a quality scolding? Perish the thought.”

“Lucky me.” Ben scrubs his hands over his face. And then he does the oddest thing—he slumps, almost like he’s given up, but Luke has no idea what he’s been trying to fight. “She isn’t going to blow something up if I look this exhausted, is she?”

“Hopefully not.” Luke waves his remaining fingers. “She might just cut off my other hand.”

Ben gets to his feet, considering the drop below them. Surrounded on all sides by open space and perched atop something infinitely high. As if he could step off and make the choice whether to fly or fall.

“I’ll keep it on ice for you,” he offers, a faint echo of humour.

(Maybe he would’ve been happier being a pilot, after all.)

“See, this is why you’re my favourite nephew,” Luke replies, and his smile feels misshapen and strange as he stands and they begin the climb down in silence.

It’s a tentative truce they’re all too used to, slotting into place like rime ice over a frozen lake. Jagged and brittle, but solid enough underneath. Give it time and the frost will thicken to be unbreakable.

The moon is bright and the sky is clear, but unlike his nephew, Luke remembers one thing from his vision. Clouds blurring the horizon. Ozone and rain and the war drum of thunder, heralding the lightning that will decimate everything in its path. Its familiar sting reaches to the roots of his teeth, reminds him of one right choice, one last smile, a goodbye that should never have happened. If Ben senses it, if _Leia_ senses it (because it can’t be a coincidence that the night the scales tipped and the dark came to call is the same night his sister is insistently pulling at their connection for his attention), things might be worse than he thought.

A storm is coming. They don’t _have_ time. But they _do_ have each other, and if the only other thing is fading dreams and the ground falling away beneath their feet, that’ll have to be enough.

It’d just be easier if Luke knew what he had to protect his family from in the first place.

That’s all.

—

At BD-1’s insistence, Rey takes things easy for the rest of the day.

It’s something she hasn’t had luxury of doing since… _ever_. The lack of productivity sits uneasily in her gut, one eye fixed on the dwindling food portions in her stockpile, the other on BD-1’s broken sensor, but she goes along with it without complaint because the last thing she wants is for him to fry a circuit over _her_. And she _is_ exhausted, so maybe that uncomfortable ache is the same one she gets when she thinks of her parents; a strange kind of happiness.

She spends the afternoon sketching BD-1 in various poses, taking care of her plants, sewing up the rips in her clothes and rewiring a few things around the AT-AT. When evening comes, she and BD-1 head outside, take turn telling stories as they watch the sunset and Rey feels the inevitable turn of the planet flowing through each of her cells.

The strange vision fragmenting across her mind, already distorted and twisted by the harsh scrutiny of reality, barely recognisable—yeah, she’s not thinking about that. There’s plenty to distract her when the living aura of the Force rests permanently at the forefront of her thoughts, a chaotic, foreign beat she’s still trying to match her steps in time with. That first moment of hyperawareness never goes away, saturating colours to depths and hues she never could have dreamed of, working through her eyes to cut through any dimness like it only exists in theory, the scent of sand and metal and water thick underneath her nose. She can taste the remnants of her meagre dinner coating her tongue still, can hear the whine of two speeders even though they’re miles away, can feel every grain of sand against her legs and the tingle radiating off BD-1 all the way down to her marrow.

She wonders if having better senses means being a better Jedi, too. She hopes so.

She hops into her hammock that night with a blanket full of stardust keeping her warm and the gentle ebb and flow of the universe lulling her mind to peace.

It’s the best sleep she’s ever had.

—

Her life definitely gets more interesting in the weeks that follow.

As soon as her ankle heals up, she’s back out scavenging, spending the blistering days holed up inside metal behemoths, ripping out their insides with BD-1 in tow. For a while, they never head outside a certain radius beyond the AT-AT, but time picks away the lingering fear, and while Rey has absolutely no plans to retrieve her bat from the Security Droid Room, it isn’t long before they begin venturing further like normal.

With the Force dialling her senses up to eleven, Rey doesn’t have to worry about fighting other scavengers for scrap. If a wreck is occupied or a speeder skirts too close, she moves on. Keeping secret, keeping hidden, keeping safe. BD-1 helps her as he always does, and when she begins gathering materials for a new weapon, he’s the one who teaches her to build the perfect piece of training equipment.

Based on Cal’s lightsaber and the training staff he uses in his lessons, Rey’s brand new weapon is nearly twice as tall as she is when it’s done. BD-1 spouts something about growth charts and how she’ll age into it, but it’s all a moot point after he makes a couple adjustments and splits the thing in half. With a swish and a flick, she can reattach or disconnect the two ends instantly—two weapons hidden as one.

[“I don’t know how to build one, so you probably won’t get a lightsaber until we find my Cal,”] BD-1 tells her, almost apologetic as she carefully rotates the staff from hand to hand, the two of them hidden in the shadow of the AT-AT.

“That’s alright,” Rey replies, brings the staff to a stop, then spins it in the other direction. “I never really understood why Jedi use lightsabers anyway. They sound cool and all, and I’ll learn whatever Cal teaches, but why would you bring a laser sword to a blaster battle?”

[“It’s to do with the Force,”] BD-1 explains. [“Lightsabers are powered by kyber crystals. The crystals are connected to the Force, and they choose the Jedi they want to serve. My Cal always said it was more like having an extra arm than having a weapon—except this arm could cut through metal and deflect blaster bolts.”]

“Deflect blaster bolts? Seriously?”

[“Only Jedi have the reflexes to use a lightsaber like that. It takes a lot of practice to direct them where you want them to go, though. And a lot of nerve to stand there while you get shot at,”] BD-1 adds, sounding like he’s quoting from something. He shakes his head back and forth, scuffing the sand with his feet. [“I know where we could find kyber crystals, but when my Cal went there it was being mined by the Empire. I have no idea how it’ll have changed.”]

“And we wouldn’t know what to do with the crystal anyway,” Rey continues thoughtfully. She separates her staff, testing the weight of both ends and experimentally swinging them. “Don’t worry about it, BeeDee, seriously. I know how to look after myself.”

[“I know you do.”]

It’s instant, the reply. As if BD-1 never doubted that for a moment, and nobody has ever treated Rey that way before. Plutt may tell his thugs to leave her alone, might know she’s one of his best, but that’s only after she proved herself. Over and over. For _three years_. As for Mashra and Ivano, they help her, but all of that stems from her ability to fit in spaces they can’t. Their kindness is conditional. The moment Rey stops being useful to them, they won’t have any reason to look her way. She doesn’t think they’ll hurt her. She knows they won’t protect her either.

That’s the way it’s always worked on Jakku.

But BD-1 stays with her just because he _wants_ to. He trusted her with Cal’s secret and he trusted her to learn how to use the Force, even knowing first-hand the damage it can cause and the lives it can destroy, and he _keeps on_ trusting her. Like he knows what her answer will be before the question is even asked, and faith like that gives Rey the courage to keep making the choices she needs to. Not the Force, not the Light and the Dark, not even the voice and its anxious murmurings when the nights grow too long and the monsters get too close—just knowing someone’s out there who believes she’ll do the right thing and stays because she _matters_.

Rey wipes her eyes, stubbornly telling herself it was just sweat that dripped into them. “And I’ve got you by my side,” she says, resting her arms at her side so she can show the full width of her smile. “Together, we’re unstoppable.”

BD-1 bounces in place before racing up to her, clambering up onto her shoulder—her right, because BD-1 knows her left is the one she dislocated, and it still _hurts_ despite the fact her ankle healed days ago, and it’s the shoulder her brand is on so she’s never really like him sitting that side anyway, and—

He's beeping madly in delight, antennae vibrating with all the happiness he can’t hold in his little body, and—

_And_ —

The Force swells around them, filled to the brim with the fierce rush of warmth cradling Rey’s heart. Twirling, whipping up sand and pulling Rey into a gentle fall where she drops the ends of her staffs and rolls, BD-1 trilling from the safety of her arms. She hasn’t managed to manipulate the Force again yet, but she isn’t afraid when she tosses BD-1 up into the air because she knows it’ll catch him if she can’t.

Her weapon lies forgotten until they’re both half-buried and exhausted from their impromptu game. Rey lays on her back, breathless and bright-eyed, BD-1 perched comfortably on her stomach, and as she stares up at the darkening sky, she can’t help but think _this is what happiness should be_.

It's a single thought, passing through the way all thoughts do, except this one catches at the fringes. A tiny epiphany that grows as the days keep passing and the sky stays empty and the family that left her behind doesn’t doesn’t _doesn’t_ come back. It sticks whenever that ache burrows through her insides, pulls her gaze away from the faces at Niima Outpost that never belong to her parents, lingers and hovers and _stays_ , and honestly—

Honestly, Rey doesn’t even try to push it away.

But that’s for the hours when the sun is up, ruled by responsibility and necessity and survival. Survival on Jakku under Plutt’s rule is a constant waking battle, and while Rey can’t siphon out the finer points of warfare from the flashes of memories scattered across the sands—waiting for her to pick them up and tuck them somewhere safe to rest, _finally_ —she’s gotten pretty good at not dying. She learned how to count and draw before she could write or read, but before that she learned how to _fight_ , and once she started, she never stopped. Bruised knuckles, electricity in her veins, warnings flying from between her teeth and ferroceramic hanging on their coattails. Whatever it takes to get through one more day.

It's when night swings into existence, in the relative safety of her AT-AT with nobody but BD-1 around to see, that her _future_ starts to take shape.

—

Cal isn’t a perfect teacher. He hops back and forth across topics, references things Rey doesn’t understand, and he has an annoying tendency to skip past things before he’s fully explained them. It wouldn’t be a problem if Rey could actually _talk_ to him, but no matter how real he seems in the moment, he’ll always vanish once the recording ends. Only empty space and silence left behind.

Luckily, Rey’s been surviving with that her entire life.

So it’s Rey and BD-1, and it’s the time of night when late becomes early without anyone noticing the difference, and it’s notebooks lined with instructions and crossed-out addendums and more drawings than she can actually fit into her growing pile of notebooks. It’s training her body to bend ways it’s never had to before, building up muscles she didn’t even know she had, running up and down dunes in the silverite light of the moons while her breath trails behind and all the progress catalogued in her footprints is erased by the wind soon after. BD-1 runs with her, monitors all the while, making adjustments to better suit her body’s needs and always stopping her before she pushes too far.

Her limbs still take on the consistency of rice paper most mornings. It makes walking interesting, if nothing else, and she keeps trying and listens to BD-1 when he says she’s done enough, and little by little, it gets easier.

That’s just for her body. The easiest lessons come in the form of what Cal calls ‘self-defence’. It’s bizarre, because Rey already _knows_ most of what Cal’s telling her, just not the words to go with it. Fighting and movement is ingrained into every fibre of her being, something even the Force seems to recognise as it flutters around whenever she meditates, tugging at her hair and ruffling her clothes, tweaking her fingers and bouncing about her ribcage. Almost as if it can feel her restlessness and is reflecting it back. Telling her _it’s not just you, you aren’t alone in this_.

Or maybe she’s projecting. It’s comforting either way. Like how BD-1’s endless manic energy always makes her feel better about her abysmal attention span.

Watching someone explain something you already know gets very boring _very_ quick, after all. In the end, the solution for her lack of focus occurs on a whim one night and quickly becomes the source of her growing menagerie of sketches.

Drawing isn’t movement—well, it _is_ , but most of it’s confined to her arm and whenever she stretches to give her back a break. _Drawings_ , though, _do_ have movement. They have a weight, a line of balance, a centre of gravity, and the more Rey draws, the more she sees the patterns in every stance Cal shows off.

It's subtle, and Cal doesn’t ever actually mention it, but there’s a flow to the way he moves. A kind of permanent suspension keeping him drawn up on the balls of his feet, his fists loose and light, his centre of gravity low and guarded. It’s still boring, but she begins to understand the phases involved in every motion, how muscles and speed and strength are actually used, and it’s never confined to one part of the body. With the way Cal zips about in his recordings, Rey usually feels like she’s trying to learn seven different things at once, and she had no idea there were so many ways she could be stronger.

Sleep quickly becomes a foreign concept. She’s exhausted more than she’s not, and BD-1 insists on a rest day each week so she can recuperate from the gauntlet she regularly charges through, but she finds herself naturally falling asleep faster and waking up earlier without ever intending to. Meditation helps, filling in the gaps unconsciousness misses, but Cal wasn’t lying when he said this would be the hardest thing she’d ever done.

She also feels like she could take on the galaxy and win most days, so she figures it’s an acceptable side-effect.

When it comes to the Force, however—

It’s—

Well—

… She’s trying.

[“I think I saw it twitch,”] BD-1 offers late one night after Rey has been gesturing uselessly at a pen for over an hour. He’s bent so low over it he may as well nudge it over himself. [“It might have been the wind, though.”]

Rey groans and flops back onto the floor, splaying her limbs out haphazardly around her. “I have to be doing something wrong. It’s been _weeks_ ,” she says, wiggling her numb fingers.

[“Is there a right way to do it?”] BD-1 wonders. Rey pushes herself onto her elbows and raises an eyebrow at her droid. He wiggles an approximation of a shrug in response. [“I don’t know. You and my Cal think and talk differently about the Force. It’s confusing.”]

“Cal’s confusing,” Rey fires back. “The way he explains it, you’re just reaching out and moving the object, only you’re using your mind instead of your hand. But it’s so natural for him he doesn’t actually explain _how_ to reach out with your mind.” With a frustrated huff she sits fully upright, leans forward and snatches the pen up. “Like that—I don’t consciously make myself pick up the pen. I decide to do it and the rest just happens.”

[“I mean I’d hope so. You’re old enough to know how to do that by now.”]

Rey throws the pen at him. BD-1 leaps over it, stumbles on the landing, and rather than right himself, he staggers forward the few steps it takes to crash headlong into her leg. “Ow,” she deadpans. “My leg will never be the same again.”

He wiggles into the space between her knees and says, [“You could borrow mine.”]

Rey’s mouth twitches. It’s a stupid joke, and she _knows_ it’s stupid. She could see it coming from a lightyear away as soon as the set-up left her mouth. It’s stupid and simple and ill-timed, so _obviously_ it makes her smile. “Damnit,” she mutters around her grin, poking the space between her droid’s sensors to hide the way her shoulders shake. “Damnit, I’m trying to be annoyed here, BeeDee.”

[“You aren’t doing a very good job of it,”] he observes slyly, completely aware of what he’s doing and all too proud of himself for it.

“I’ve been a bad influence on you,” she laments, carefully rubbing a finger around the edges of her droid’s broken sensor. They’ve been searching for a replacement, but Rey’s starting to get the impression BD-1’s a bit of a rarity when it comes to droids. Hopefully not _unique_. She promised to help him fix it, and she doesn’t want him to have to exist without half his sight, especially now she has an idea of what that must be like. Life seems so much dimmer in her memories now, watercolour pastel compared to the crystal-imbued neon filtered through her connection with the Force. She doesn’t know how she ever survived without it.

It's this connection that fuels her continuous frustration too. BD-1’s terrible, awful, no good sense of humour helps—which, yes, she’s aware he probably assimilated most of it from her. It gives her the respite she needs to always try again soon after, but when it comes down to it, she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing. She can feel the Force, she can feel the pen, she can feel herself and the space in between _everything_ —she just can’t _use_ any of it. If the Force wants something specific from her again, she’s at a loss for what it might be.

Maybe it just thinks joining in the effort to move a pen half a metre isn’t worth it.

Rey lightly slaps her cheeks and gazes across the room to where the pen has slid to a stop, hoping the impact will jolt something into place. Or at least, into a space it hasn’t been before. “Maybe I’m thinking too literally about it.”

BD-1 hums softly, a little whirring buzz that resonates along the metal of the AT-AT. Rhythmic. Calming. [“Maybe sleep on it?”]

“It’s not that late, is it?” Rey asks, surprised.

[“No,”] BD-1 admits. [“But you’d benefit from more rest, and I don’t think we’re going to get any further tonight.”]

“Is this your roundabout way of saying this is immensely boring? Because I wouldn’t blame you for it.” She gestures over to the corner that’s officially become BD-1’s charging spot. He could do with a top up, now that she’s thinking about it. “You can power down for a while and I’ll keep… waving at a pen.” With the way things have been going, it’ll probably wave back before she finally gets it to move.

Her droid stares at her for a few moments. No head tilt, no zooming in and out, not even a twitch. A guilty grin spreads its way across Rey’s cheeks.

“I’m not _planning_ to stay up all night. I didn’t mean to the last couple of times either. I just get caught up in what I’m doing, and I want to get stronger as fast as I can.”

[“I don’t think this is the sort of thing you’re supposed to rush,”] BD-1 says quietly. [“My Cal had trouble using the Force when I first met him. It would overwhelm if he tried to connect with it too strongly. He was… traumatised, after the loss of his master. It hurt him and it meant some things didn’t work right.”]

Rey recoils, eyes widening. “You never told me that.”

BD-1 shifts, toeing at the tiny space between the back of Rey’s knee and the floor. Hunched in a way she’s never seen before. [“It’s… I don’t think he’d like me talking about it,”] he says hesitantly. [“He never liked _himself_ talking about it.”]

Something sour leaks down the back of Rey’s throat. Swelling her tongue and locking up her teeth. “Does it have anything to do with you knowing how to talk me through a panic attack?” she asks softly.

BD-1 nods sadly. [“Both times you used the Force—actually _used_ it, bad things were happening. First the security droid, and then when you collapsed, and—and what if—”] He rocks back and forth clearly struggling with whatever it is he wants to say. Rey tucks her hands under her thighs and makes an effort to be still. Solid ground for BD-1 to rest against. [“What if it means you’re hurt, too?”]

Caught off-guard, it takes a moment for Rey to unstick her jaw. “I mean, those things sucked, yeah, but I’m okay,” she replies, nonplussed. “Just because something scars doesn’t mean it’s broken.”

[“Wounds need time to heal as well,”] BD-1 argues.

“We don’t _have_ time, though,” Rey says right back. “You remember what that trader in Niima Outpost said—the Battle of Jakku happened nearly twenty _years_ ago. Cal could’ve gone anywhere in that time. And I promised I’d help you find him and that’s what I’m going to do, but I can’t do that if I’m _stuck_ here. And I can’t do it without help—your help _and_ the Force’s help.” She glances around, hoping the literal lifeblood of the universe can see her glaring at it. “I don’t want power. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to help my friend.”

Something resonates then, deep in her vessels. Pricking up like a hint. The curtain over the entrance to the AT-AT flutters, spinebarrels weakly lifting their dry petals, lights glowing brighter, and that smell trickles under her nose again—the one that always makes her think of BD-1 and rain. Familiar without her being able to pinpoint why.

It's gone before she can grasp hold and keep it there.

A lot like when she’s trying to move the pen, actually.

Her eyes rove around the interior, senses spreading outwards to map every inch of the place where she sleeps. Like always, there’s nothing here but her and BD-1. No hunters hiding out in the sand. No animals roaming for their next meal. No monsters stalking between shadows.

_Will you know them when you see them?_

Rey clenches her jaw hard enough to crack. _They’ll know me_.

A ripple of satisfied amusement. The emptiness shrinks, bringing her back to the present with an unobtrusive bump, and the feeling of eyes on her disappears. When she looks back down, BD-1 is waiting patiently, accustomed to her habit of drifting off. She reaches out and rubs a thumb over his chassis, wishing she could explain exactly where it was she went. Somewhere yet nowhere at all. Pulled away yet pushed towards. Seeking yet waiting to be found.

“I’m missing something,” she murmurs.

The voice offers no more answers.

[“How about this,”] BD-1 says, and Rey immediately shifts her focus to him, letting out a breath and relaxing her shoulders. [“We rest for tonight, and tomorrow, we’ll start looking for a way to get off this shithole.”]

The tensions snaps and Rey bursts out laughing before she can stop herself. “Oh for kark’s sake, I called it that _one_ time, BeeDee.”

[“You also say ‘kark’ on a regular basis,”] he points out. [“And don’t try to change the subject!”]

“Alright, but you better not blame me for your bad language when we find Cal.”

BD-1 perks up. [“So it’s a deal?”]

“Yeah, little one. It’s a deal.” She holds out her hand and BD-1 sticks his leg up to meet it, solidifying the agreement with a shake the way they’ve seen traders do around the outpost. “I’ll look for Ivano and Mashra tomorrow. See if they have any advice.”

[“They’ll help?”] he asks, head tilting back.

Rey grimaces, carefully threading her fingers through her hair as she begins to release it from where it’s tied back. “ _Help_ might be pushing it, but I don’t think they’ll tell Plutt. It’s actually finding a ship to take us off of here that’ll be the problem.” She sighs and shakes her head out, scalp stinging from being pulled too tight all day. “We’ll work something out.”

BD-1 scampers across the floor, grabs the pen and trots back over. Holds it up for Rey to grab with a glint in his sensor. Steady right to his core.

[“I know.”]

—

When you find out you have a power only talked about in stories to make the galaxy seem like a better place than it is, when the only person who’s ever cared about you tells you their family is missing and they need help finding them, if you need to escape from the planet you were sold on—the first thing you do is observe.

Niima Outpost is a built in the shape of a circle, ringed by high fences, lashed together by sand-soaked tents and creaking workbenches, spiralling out from the hut where Unkar Plutt sequesters himself away and watches his slaves work with greedy eyes while doing absolutely nothing with his time. His thugs roam between the meagre shelters, jabbing at anyone taking a break, ignoring any violence not aimed at them and just generally being pointless nuisances. The scavengers— _slaves_ —keep out of their way and their possessions close, guarding their survival jealously. Selfishly. All of it kept in time by the rustle of clothes, the scrape of sand, the clink of metal and the breaths of a people staving death off by inches inside their arid prison.

Rey spends as little time here as possible nowadays.

She sits just outside the fence, balancing her staff across her knees, backpack nestled beside her with BD-1 safely hidden inside. A little ways away, a ship is parked in the sand flats, a mix of Plutt’s thugs and the ship’s crew milling about outside. They’re too far away for Rey to hear what they’re saying, but she can guess most of it. Arguments over scrap price. Complaints about tardiness. Grumbling comments on the hospitality. The usual crap people spout when they’re buying leftover pieces of war from a slave master who doesn’t bother showing his face.

These are the people Rey scavenges for. Who make Plutt’s little empire possible because they need parts and don’t care where they come from. She’s never spoken to any of them, has absolutely no desire too, but right now, they’re sitting there with a ship that’ll take off in the next few hours and disappear into the galaxy, and Rey _wants_.

This is the second ship that’s arrived today. As far as Rey can see, the routine is the same: the ship arrives, someone goes into the Outpost to explain what they’re here for, Plutt sends his thugs to deliver it, they haggle over price, load up the ship, then leave. Streamlined business at its worst. But there’s something strange about the transaction Rey can only articulate after BD-1 mentions it.

[“Are they searching the ship?”]

There’s nobody nearby and BD-1 keeps his voice as low as possible, even muffled by the bag as he is, but Rey casts an anxious glance about before answering. “No. Not from what I can feel,” she chews on her tongue, feeling nauseous from its swollen, spongy texture. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Plutt isn’t stupid. He’s cruel and arrogant and unfair, but he wouldn’t rule Niima Outpost the way he does if he was an idiot.

So why, when it’s sitting there in plain view of people who’d give up a limb to get off this planet, _why_ is the ship not being searched? Why is _nobody_ checking to see if a scavenger has snuck on board? Why is nobody even keeping watch?

On their way back to the Outpost, one of the thugs sneers at Rey. She stares back unafraid. Observing them observe her.

Wondering.

Missing something.

After watching the ship leave without answers to her questions, Rey heads into the Outpost, following the light of a familiar, welcoming presence.

“Hey, Ivano,” she greets. The cleaning station they’ve commandeered is cluttered with scrap. Rey automatically tallies up the value of it all as she sits down beside them. “Getting enough to eat?”

“Oh, bursting at the seams,” they snort, gesturing to the bony length of their arms. “Gonna have to scavenge up a repulsorlift chair just to keep moving.” They shake their hair out, a shaggy mess of dense brown tresses falling over their tanned face, blue eyes peering out from underneath, ringed by smudges of kohl. “What about you, pup?”

Rey shrugs. “Surviving. You know how it is.”

“Mm. Haven’t seen you about much lately,” they comment as Rey rests her staff down. “Thought you might have run into some trouble.”

She frowns at them. “I can look after myself.”

Ivano shrugs, gaze sliding up and down the length of her staff. “You’ve certainly been working hard at something. You been working out?”

“Working out what?”

“No,” they snort. “I mean training your body. Building muscle. Most people call it ‘working out’.”

“Oh.” Rey rubs at her arms, wincing as she brushes a burnt patch of skin where her clothes don’t quite cover. She doesn’t feel any different. “Um, yeah, a little. Is it that obvious?”

“Probably not,” Ivano says with a shrug as they go back to cleaning. “I just remember you being a lot smaller the last time we went out together. Speaking of which, if that’s why you’re over here, I’m afraid you’re outta luck. I’m not planning on heading back out today.”

“Actually, I wanted to ask you something,” she admits hesitantly, slipping her bag into her lap and surreptitiously loosening the flap so BD-1 can listen easier. “Well, two things.”

“Ask all you want. Ain’t no guarantee I’ll know the answer, though.”

Rey curls her fingers into her bag, feeling the hard edge of her droid poking against her knuckles. This is Ivano. Ivano who taught her Binary and showed her how to wire in power cells and told her that anyone has the power to change the galaxy, even if they never said it outright. She’s still small, she can still pay them back, and all she wants to do is ask questions.

_I’m training to be a Jedi_ , she reminds herself. _I’m not going to be afraid like Plutt._

_I am Rey._

“Why does nobody ever leave here?”

Ivano freezes, eyes darting over to meet hers. Wary. Uneasy. Maybe a flicker of anger, too. “What d’you mean?” they ask, voice betraying none of their emotions.

“I just don’t get it,” Rey replies with a shrug. The Force slows in the space around them, highlighting any slight shift in attention their way. Rey lets herself be distracted, absently glancing over towards a woman at a nearby table who’s simply trying to break up the monotony of cleaning scrap by staring—not actively listening. “We’re not in cages. None of us actually want to be here. Most of us are probably going to die. So, why does nobody ever try to leave?”

Ivano fiddles with the fuel injector in their hands, hair covering their eyes. It’s strange. They don’t seem _suspicious_. But they’re definitely thinking too hard about _something_. “Uh-huh. And what was your other question?”

“‘Uh-huh’ isn’t an answer to my first question.”

“Humour me, then.”

Rey forces herself to breathe normally, tapping her fingers against her backpack in sets of five. BD-1 vibrates minutely. Unnoticeable unless pressed up against her the way he is. “Whatever. Fine. I just wanted to know if you could teach me to fix stuff again. Just so I have more valuable things to give Plutt.”

“Ship parts, you mean,” Ivano says, and there’s something in his voice that softens the prickling line of defensive anger firing up Rey’s blood.

“Yeah,” she replies warily. “What else would I mean? Scrap that works always goes for more food portions.”

“Wasn’t calling that into question, pup,” they say, turning the fuel injector over once more before holding it out to Rey. Baffled, Rey takes it. “But I do have _one_ asking.”

Simple give and take. She understands this. “Shoot.”

“Those two askings of yours… they wouldn’t happen to be related, would they?”

Rey tilts her head at them, curiosity beginning to outstrip annoyance. Ivano has always had an easy-going aura to them, their smile a lazy, crooked thing that comes a little too easily. But there’s something about them Rey’s never been able to put her finger on. Not _bad_. Just different. And right now that difference is Ivano looking at her looking back at them, and they aren’t laughing. There’s no pity. No scepticism.

Only a quiet sense of contemplation.

Without meaning to, she grimaces. Maybe _this_ is the sort of thing Cal means when he talks about finding _peace_.

Ivano shakes their head at her expression and slides a cleaning brush over to her. “Might wanna work on your information phishing skills.”

“I thought fishing was that thing people do around water.”

They waggle their finger. “Don’t go pretending to be stupid now. I know you’ve got one of those dumb notebooks stuffed full of all the fancy vocabulary I bestow you with on a regular basis.”

“I have a whole page dedicated to _ain’t_ ,” she replies dryly.

“Mashra corrupted you into proper speak from an early age, poor thing,” they sigh before pointedly tapping the scrap in Rey’s hand. “You gonna start cleaning that?”

“Why should I?” she asks, setting it down on the table and getting to her feet. She and BD-1 have been sitting around the Outpost for hours by now. She’s hot and burnt and thirsty and _bored_ , and if she has to work this out by herself, she’d rather get started sooner rather than later. “I’ve got my own stuff to be getting on with. Let me know if you ever wanna answer my questions.”

The reasons for her questions, admittedly, don’t lead to the best plan in her arsenal. As far as she and BD-1 have been able to work out, there are three ways off Jakku: stow away on someone else’s ship, steal someone else’s ship, or try to repair their own. Any one of which would be utterly _insane_ to attempt but—

Rey was sold into slavery aged five. She hears a voice in her head nobody else does that never stops wailing for her to _run,_ and she’s being taught the ways of the Force by the hologram of a man who might already be dead. BD-1 has lost his entire family and he spent _at least_ the last twenty years trapped in a cargo hold while both his memory and battery slowly decayed into nothingness. Utterly alone.

Sanity isn’t really a consideration.

The problem with repairing a ship—or _a_ problem, among countless others—is that _if_ Rey was able to find a ship still capable of flying and _if_ she could somehow learn how to fly it and _if_ she managed to keep it hidden from other scavengers, she has absolutely no idea how to repair a starship in the first place. She could rattle off what parts go where in her sleep, and if Jakku has taught her anything, it’s that almost anything can be repurposed into something else.

But there’s a monumental difference between understanding how something can be taken apart, and how it can be put back together.

Except—

If there’s even the slightest _chance_ it could work and she doesn’t even _try_ —

She breaks her promise.

_We don’t break our promises_.

It’s as this reminder breaks across her thoughts that Ivano’s hand closes around her wrist. Skin jumping. Instinct surging. She pulls her elbow in close and leans into Ivano’s space, twists her arm towards theirs and breaks their grip as soon as their elbows connect, is half way to breaking Ivano’s nose before rational thought screams back into existence and she jerks away, sand kicking up around them where her feet stumble and stop.

She’s still raised on the balls of her feet, one hand still clutching her backpack close and BD-1 closer, senses seeking out any other approaching threats.

“Whoa there, pup! Karking hell, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Don’t—don’t _do_ that,” she snaps, turning away from them to hide her droid’s anxious fidgeting. “Don’t just grab me out of nowhere like that.”

Ivano half-stands, hands held out in placation, regret heavy in the air like vinegar and missed opportunities. It pulls Rey’s gaze away and to the ground, adrenaline confused and fuming in her blood, nose stinging. She squints her eyes. Sniffs.

“Oh, fuck, I really am sorry. Please just sit back down. I just wanted to keep talking to you.”

The Force roils through Ivano, their light flickering around the edges. Rey brings her head back up in confusion. “You don’t have to freak out about it.”

They stare at her for a moment before sitting heavily, bringing their forehead to their palm. “I can’t believe I nearly made a little girl cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she protests.

“… You weren’t meant to hear that,” Ivano mutters through their fingers.

Oh. Rey rubs at her ear as she sits back down, casting a glance about to see how much attention they’ve gained. The woman at the other cleaning station has gone back to her scrap, visibly disappointed nothing more interesting happened. Everyone else is too preoccupied with their own business.

She slips a hand inside her backpack to let it rest on BD-1’s head, reminding him she’s safe and that _he_ needs to stay safe as well. “Okay. I’m not crying,” she repeats awkwardly, embarrassment starting to sink into all the space fight or flight cleared. She scratches her cheek. “Are you actually going to answer my questions now or what?”

“Yes. That. Right.” Ivano shakes themselves and points to their scrap. “I am. But not here. So, help me finish this up and—well, I know I said I wasn’t heading out again, but there’s something I think you might be interested in seeing.”

Rey’s heart stops dead.

She sucks in a breath and keeps it there, startled into petrification from the implications ramming through Ivano’s words. She’s eight. Not an idiot. If they know what she’s thinking about doing from two questions and now wants to _show her something_ —

There’s just no way, right?

BD-1 twitches. The smallest motion she understands with the Force aligning them together in proximity. A single nod.

A _chance_.

_You aren’t running fast enough_.

Ivano extracts an ignition coil from their mess of parts and holds it up to the light, examining it closely, turning it over with the calloused, practiced hands of a scavenger. They look over, eyebrows raised at Rey’s stunned silence. “You’re not gonna get anything done gawking,” they say. “There’s only so many hours in the day and I’d rather we got on our way before—”

“That’s all I have to do?” Rey interrupts, still staring at them. “Just—just help you clean scrap?”

“That’s all.” They shrug. Slant their mouth. Wink. “If you think you’re up to the task.”

Rey picks up the brush with numb fingers, not entirely convinced her heart has restarted beating yet. The heat of BD-1’s sun-warmed metal clings to her skin even as she gets to work, sinking down deep and lifting something up from below with all the strength they share together. The wind rises, cooling the sweat dripping down her neck, blowing off her lingering exhaustion, chimes echoing across the Outpost and the Force singing in time

because

this

is

something

that

all

the

STARS

in

the

UNIVERSE

planned

for.

Sand crunches between Rey’s teeth.

Strangely, it tastes an awful lot like hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I know it's been months but things have been... hectic. I'm also about to start my masters so can't promise an update schedule BUT I still have my outline, I still have my ideas, and gdi I want to keep writing this. So I will. 
> 
> Anyway, LOOK IT'S LUKE SKYWALKER. Doing his best for Ben but there are issues. (Ben's doing his best too.) Wonder if those weird shared nightmares have any importance. Probably not. 
> 
> Rey is getting somewhere and BD-1 is best boi as always. And look at me giving detailed background to a character I think has been mentioned one time in all Star Wars lore. We'll get into that next chapter.
> 
> Speaking of which, there's the next chapter, then a time skip, then two more (maybe three, I have no impulse control) before Rey gets off Jakku. She will get to those stars, I can definitely promise THAT.
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments, leave some more if you feel like! Stay safe out there friends.


	5. The Knife of Never Letting Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Precipices, yo. We got a theme going. Let’s tip down and see what’s at the bottom.
> 
> JFO update: brief reference to the Zeffo, an ancient race of Force users. The majority of the game is spent exploring the tombs of their three sages. Also a brief reference to Dathomir, which you visit in-game, and is Merrin's home planet. Finally, I mention Trilla, the main antagonist. I think that's all the new stuff but let me know if you need more info about something!
> 
> WARNING: this chapter contains references to slave chips, a canonical Star Wars device implanted in a slave’s body and designed to explode if the slave attempts to escape. Angst too, of course, but plenty of comfort at the end.
> 
> ~~Spot the T.S. Eliot reference~~

_“Carbon Ridge? Seriously?”_

_“You’ve heard the stories, I take it.”_

_“Everyone has.”_

_She’s right. Even I know about them from my Rey. We’ve never seen Carbon Ridge, but that’s because the dead-enders chase off anyone who try to get close, and there’s no reason to risk their wrath to go sightseeing. Blobfish Bastard sent out an expedition once. Only two of the ten thugs came back. Those dead-enders are killers._

_So is my Rey, I realise. So ~~was~~ is my Cal._

_My Rey says the galaxy is an ugly place and I know she’s right, but she’s also wrong, because if it were really so ugly, I would never have found my Rey or my Cal._

_I wonder where the line is drawn._

_I poke my head out of my Rey’s pack. I’m in the back of companion-Ivano’s X34 Landspeeder. They are in the driver seat and I’m behind them, so I probably won’t be seen._

_My Rey is squinting at companion-Ivano. The sun is bright, but I think she’s more confused/suspicious/uncertain. She is so much stronger than she was a few months ago. I forget, sometimes, when she gets that look in her eye like she has enough willpower to reach the stars with a single jump, that she is so young. Even sitting in this speeder, dwarfed by her chair and the controls made for adult proportions, she seems…_ more.

 _More of what, I’m trying to understand. Maybe it has something to do with the Force. Or maybe my Cal? Or maybe_ [Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable].

_She’s still very small._

_I sit and I hide, and I watch and I listen and I feel. Just in case she needs me._

_“There’s nothing there, Ivano,” says my Rey, voice raised over the whine of the engines. “Just a bunch of rocks and dust and crazy people.”_

_“You sure about that?”_

_“Oh, right. I forgot about the super-secret Imperial base nobody’s ever seen.”_

_I can’t see companion-Ivano’s face, but I can hear the smile in their voice. They smile a lot. “Hold onto that cynicism, pup. Seeing as how you’re on the road to trying the impossible though, I’d keep an open mind before I start shutting ideas down without proof.”_

_My Rey has nothing to say to that. She glances back at me. I’m not sure what to say either. I’ve seen a lot of Imperial bases in strange places. The Emperor and Darth Vader must have liked being able to hide. The Zeffo tombs were in strange places too, but I think that’s more because nobody ever thought to look for them until Master Cordova, so maybe the best way to hide something is to make sure nobody has a reason to see it at all._

_I dip down into the backpack a little more._

_“We’re not heading into a fight, are we?” my Rey asks._

_“You think I’m gonna throw you at those old bastards and see what happens?” Companion-Ivano snorts. My Rey makes an expression like she doesn’t think so but could also be wrong. It twists her face in odd directions. “Sit back and enjoy the speeder ride. We’re just looking, is all.”_

_“Why can’t you just tell me?”_

_“Because you need to know how to get there.” Companion-Ivano turns their head, looking directly at my Rey. “And I need a little time to get my words straight. So hush.”_

_She opens her mouth to answer, but the speeder suddenly swerves to the side, throwing everything out of balance. I scrabble, but I’m already tipping, and there’s the floor smacking into me with a hard clank that jolts everything into fuzzy darkness._ _  
_

_It takes me a horrible second to understand it's just the backpack that landed on me._

_“Karking hell, you carrying rocks around in that bag of yours?”_

_“Watch where you’re going,” my Rey snaps as I try to work out which way is up and I listen to her climbing over the back of her seat. “Forget the dead-enders. It’s your driving that’s going to get us killed.”_

_“They don’t exactly give licenses out here. I work with what I’ve got,” Ivano responds. They sound strangely defensive even though they’re the one who nearly crashed in the first place._

_“What’s a license?” my Rey asks, bending down to right the backpack. I settle the right way round and blink up at her, trying to look apologetic. She gives me a smile in return, the strange one that never looks quite right, and passes a hand over my head. It’s shaking. Static gravitates to her touch. I wonder if she’s scared or excited._

_She makes it hard to tell sometimes._

_I press back to let her know I’m okay._

_Companion-Ivano is muttering some sort of expletive, but it doesn’t seem to be directed at my Rey. She hoists me back onto the seat while they finally answer. “It’s… On most planets you have to do a test before you can drive one of these. Once you pass it, you get the license to prove you did, and if you drive without one, you get punished."  
_

_“That explains a lot about you.”_

_“Didn’t I tell you to hush?”_

_My Rey grumbles but obeys. I wish I could ask what she’s thinking. This whole circumstance is so strange I don’t know how to process it. I know my Rey can handle herself, and she has me to help if something goes wrong, and I understand that if there was a base here at some point there must have been ships coming and going, but why does companion-Ivano know anything about it? Why are they risking my Rey for something that might not even be there? Why haven’t they said anything about it before?_

_And if there is a base—_

_If there_ was _one, at some point—_

_I can’t help but think—_

_I can’t stop myself_ _ḣ̤_ _o_ _̠͈͊͠_ _p_ _͉̦̓̎_ _i_ _̮͝_ _nģ_ _͕̏̈_ _́—_

_Is this how I was left on Jakku?_

_There are answers to those questions. I’m not sure I like any of them. But what choice do we really have?_

_Eventually, companion-Ivano begins to slow down. I think we’ve been rising for a while, but it’s hard to tell and I don’t know these lands. We could be anywhere. It reminds me of running around planets with my Cal. I need to remember to tell my Rey that._

_“No need to lug your backpack about, pup. We’re just heading to that ledge there.”_

_My Rey glances down at me. I nod hesitantly, and I trust ‘that ledge there’ must not be far because she acquiesces and settles me to the side. I listen to their footsteps recede, then hear them stop, then I slowly poke my head out and look to see where we’ve been taken._

_We are on a precipice. The ground is much more solid than the dunes and salt plains I’m used to with my Rey, sun-stained rock bled to orange and red. Dry and cracked. They rise out of the earth in strange formations, smoothed down by erosion, twisting into arches and spires and anvils, hiding whatever path we took to get here. Beyond the ledge, it’s empty space until the bottom, where the land is dominated by rugged walls and vicious ravines, open wide like gaping mouths. They converge on the tallest barrier of all; a mountain ridge spanning farther than my sensor can see. It’s clogged by more cragged rock, too much dust, too much sand, the thin line at its zenith sharp enough to cut the air. Treacherous. Hostile._

_Carbon Ridge._

_For one strange moment, I see Dathomir, but the sky is blue and the sun is yellow and there will be no sister-Merrin waiting to help us through. Only the dead-enders and whatever else might be waiting in the shadows._

_My Rey stands a little way back from the edge, scanning the horizon with tense shoulders, and I see her hand twitch where it’s clenched tightly around her staff. She doesn’t use it. She watches companion-Ivano instead._

_“So… what were you trying to get your words straight for?” she asks slowly. I have to strain to hear but I do not dare leave the speeder._

_Companion-Ivano doesn’t look at my Rey when they answer. They’ve been staring out at the ridge this whole time, and when they talk, they speak steady/even/matter-of-fact. As if they’re trying to make it not mean much at all. “I was trying to work out the best way to tell you I worked for the Empire.”_

_I definitely hear_ that _._

_“You… worked for the Empire,” my Rey repeats, and she looks back at me sitting frozen and her staff tilts upwards. Not enough to be a threat; enough to make it very easy to become one. Separating us from the human smiling out at the land and the secret they said we were here to find._

_I watch. I listen._

_I hate having to be so far from my Rey._

_“It wasn’t so bad,” they continue, still talking in the eerily calm way. “There’s plenty of horror stories about what the Empire did, but they treated their own alright. Trained me up to be an engineer. That’s why I know so much about ship parts,” They turn to my Rey and their smile fades. A single turn of their head and they’ll see me but I won’t hide when my Rey might be in danger, I_ won̯̍'̮͙̈́̎t̙͆.̪́. _Not ever._

 _“That’s—what the kark is that supposed to mean?” my Rey demands, planting her foot back even though Ivano has made no move towards her. “So what if they treated you alright? Plutt treats his thugs_ alright. _That doesn’t make anything else he does okay!”_

_A strange breeze rises around us. I see it in the dust and pebbles and ripples of my Rey’s clothing. She’s furious, but that’s only because she’s hurt. I’ve told her too many stories about the Empire to ever make this okay._

_Ivano’s face twitches. Their head dips quickly to hide, so I’m never sure of what I see, but if I could be, I might say that they look hurt too._

_“I didn’t join them because I wanted to hurt people, pup,” they say, and it is a mark of who they are that my Rey listens. “I needed a job. I needed to eat. You know what that’s like.”_

_“Don’t make this about me,” my Rey snaps._

_Ivano grimaces. “I just want you to understand. That’s all. I wasn’t a soldier. I fixed ships. Made sure they worked and didn’t pay too much attention to who or what they were carrying. S’easy to be complicit when you’re comfortable.” They turn to look back over the ride, though I’m not sure they’re really seeing it at all. Like my Rey when she lets the echoes in, except these ghosts belong to Ivano alone. “Cuz the stories start trickling in, don’t they? I know you remember. They were always your favourites.”_

_The zephyr keeps swirling around us, keeping my Rey’s hair out of her face where it’s fallen loose from the knots, and her eyes are hard, but her voice is quiet. “I remember. Ordinary people trying to do right by everybody else. That’s what you always said.”_

_“Wish I could tell you I was one of them,” Ivano mutters. “Wish I could tell_ myself _that. But I just thought, ‘it can’t really be that bad. I ain’t a killer and nobody’s ever asked me to be one’. So I didn’t do a damned thing. That’s probably why they sent me here.” They sweep their arm out in an effort to encapsulate the entirety of the space beyond the ledge. “A research base. Didn’t have a clue what they were researching. Nobody would’ve told me even if I asked.”_

_“You were there to fix ships,” says my Rey, and as she slowly lowers her staff, the wind dies down as well._

_“Even a secret facility needs an entrance,” they say, and there’s that smile again. “Not that I cared much anymore. Did my job, but by then, I’d had enough. I wanted out. Would’ve taken any opportunity.” They snort. “Too little too late. The Battle of Jakku began, and suddenly the day came where I_ was _asked to be a killer. I’d never even held a damn blaster before but—”_

_They suck in a breath, as if they’ve suddenly been hurt. I can’t see anything that might have hit them. I don’t think my Rey did it either._

_“I ran, more than anything,” they continue, glossing over the strange pause before my Rey can interrupt. “I wasn’t going to die for them. Wasn’t going to die for anyone. But the couple times I got stopped—Empire, Rebellion, whoever…” They trail off. It isn’t hard to fill the gaps. “I ran, and then I wandered, and then I stumbled across Niima Outpost. Hid myself away. Had nowhere else to go and nobody who cared who I was, and I made sure it stayed that way.” They shake themselves. Maybe they’re trying to throw away the bad memories. “Over time, I heard how the battle went, as well the stories about this place. But I can tell you one thing they can’t. During the battle, most of the base was destroyed from the inside. Empire didn’t want any nasty secrets getting out, I suppose.”_

_Cautiously, my Rey moves to stand beside them. I tilt my head. I squint my sensor so it’s almost closed. Ivano is not friend-Cere. They definitely aren’t Trilla. But if I tilt and squint and take half a step back, I think the pieces could line up just enough to be familiar._

_“Must have been important,” my Rey says._

_Ivano glances at her. “Important enough the dead-enders still think they need to protect it with whatever sanity they’ve got left. Thing is, pup, not all of it was destroyed. Can’t imagine there’s much of worth to anyone, but, well… every side has got its crazies.”_

_“How d’you know it wasn’t all destroyed?” she asks, gaze fixed on the horizon.  
_

_“I crawled my way out after they asked me to help blow it up,” they say and their smile has far too many teeth. “I doubt the hangar’s completely intact, but it was one of the places they didn’t want damaged too badly, just in case. If there was anywhere on Jakku you’d find a ship that could still fly, it’d be there.”_

_My Rey raises a hand and presses it against her forehead like she’s trying to keep everything from spilling out. “But… if there might be working ships, why haven’t you ever tried to take one?”_

_“No idea how to fly. Besides, I think Jakku is where I belong. I made my peace with that a long time ago.” They bend down and grab a handful of dust, letting it drift away between their fingers. “I made my choices. Never made very good ones. But you… I think you’ll be different. You belong in the stars, pup. Not stuck in the sand living this kinda life. Scavenging, scrounging, working yourself half to death, fighting for every morsel.” They pause and look at my Rey’s staff. Built to defend. Made to hurt enough so nobody thinks about coming back for more. “Not one person should ever have to do that.”_

_“But we do,” my Rey says flatly. “That doesn’t make any sense. We have to survive.”_

_“I’m too selfish to be the one to disagree with you there.” Companion-Ivano laughs, and I’m understanding now why they smile so much. My Rey does it too. Not as often—enough that I finally recognise the same thing on companion-Ivano’s face. “That don’t mean we ain’t wrong.”_

_My Rey frowns and picks at a loose bit of fabric on her tunic. “I don’t understand,” she says eventually._

_Companion-Ivano shrugs. “I don’t have all the answers. Nobody does. What I_ do _know, for sure, is no pup like you should have to carry a weapon like that just in case you need to bloody your hands for a piece of metal.”_

_Without warning, they turn back to the speeder. I dive down and wriggle into the pack, staying perfectly still as their footsteps get closer. I will not be taken from my Rey. No matter what companion-Ivano says, they will only go so far. They’ve taken us to the ledge, not shown what lies at the bottom. I will not let them take me._

_I'_ _͖͖̊̒_ _l_ _̟̭̩̐͊͌͒͜_ _ĺ_ _̹̔͜_ _̥̪̟͆͘̚_ _ki_ _̗͌_ _ľ_ _̠͛͜_ _l_ _̹̦̟̟͑_ _́_ _̎͞_ _̙͚̱͒_ _̀_ _͡_ _t_ _̙͛_ _ẖ̦͓̱̂͗̌͛ȇ͍̠̌͘͟_ _m_ _͛͢_ _̗̟͋̿_ _ī_ _̦̠̐_ _f_ _̼̥_ _̀_ _̋͘͢_ _͈͋͢͝_ _t_ _̛̹̝͔͍_ _̀_ _̏̽̎͜_ _h_ _̨̄_ _̀_ _ͅ_ _é_ _̹̟͎̘̈͐̽_ _ỷ_ _̹_ _͓̫̝͔̊̇͡͠_ _t_ _͖̽_ _r_ _̛͉̟̽_ _́_ _̐͟ͅ_ _y_ _̨̛̙̦̜͊͊͝_ _._ _̻͗_

 _They only get into their seat and wait. I can’t hear my Rey. I hope she comes soon. I don’t think she liked hearing what companion-Ivano had to say. It must be easy for someone who’s lived so much longer and seen so much more to have doubts, but Jakku is all my Rey has ever known, and while I hate some of the things she has to do and see and be, she wouldn’t be alive any other way. That doesn’t make it_ right _. I don’t think it makes it anything else either._

 _It just_ is _._

 _Maybe my Cal would know the right answer, but he’s_ [Error: Data Corrupted – Information Unavailable. Encryption Key Required].

_… Wait, what—_

_The pack jostles. I jump. Nearly screech. My processors grind to a halt. By the time they’ve re-synced and I understand my Rey is back and I’m in her arms I—_

_I don’t remember._

_It was important but I don’t I don’t I_ _d_ _̤̬̽͒_ _o_ _̞͚̮͆̌͋_ _n͇_ _̈͟͞_ _'_ _͓͐_ _t_ _͔̍_ _̮̹̞̄͒͒_ ** _r_** ** _͖̚_** ** _em_** ** _̛̟̼̬̠͛͊_** ** _́ę_** ** _̗̻̈͗̌_** ** _m_** ** _̨̂_** ** _ḃ͙̦͚͛͠_** ** _ẽ_** ** _̢̛̘̪̖͂̌_** ** _r_** ** _̲͊_** ** _._** ** _̡̺̗̗_** ** _̀_** ** _̍͒͘_**

 _Ḭ̻̌̕_ _t_ _̗͇̹_ _̣_ _̋̽͌̏_

 _i_ _̡͖͚̽͆̈͌̾͜ͅ_ _ṡ̫͔͠_ _n'_ _̖̇̐͟_ _t_ _͈͓̽̍͆ͅ_

 _F_ _̱̈_ _̟̇_ _A_ _̰̼̥̋̐̔̐͟͟͡_ _̢͎͎͐͋̍_ _I_ _̢̞̳̇̑̍_ _R_ _͔̞͒̋_ _._ _̭̰̏̔͡ͅ_

_Nothing on this stupid planet is fair._

_My Rey keeps me close as companion-Ivano starts the speeder without another word between them. I press against her through the backpack, feel her fingers curl against my chassis. She must know I’m shaking. I try to stop. And I wonder. Because this stupid planet made my Rey a killer. The Empire made my Cal and friend-Cere and Trilla and companion-Ivano killers. Something must have made Blobfish Bastard a killer._

_I’m a killer too._

_Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it is._

_So I wonder what killers are supposed to look like if not like us._

—

BD-1 shakes for a while after they leave Carbon Ridge. Rey doesn’t know why and there’s no way to ask him with Ivano so close. She sits still and solid and quiet, watching the scenery blur from rock to sand, feeling just as fleeting. Liminal. Racing across Jakku in a speeder with someone who worked for the Empire. One of the bad guys. One of the monsters who hunted down Jedi, tortured Force-sensitives into submission and slaughtered those who wouldn’t comply.

Except that’s not how it works. That’s _never_ been how it works.

Because the thing about her Psychometry is it doesn’t just show her imagines or let her hear whispers. It lets her feel them. _Be_ them. And the people who died in the Battle of Jakku—they weren’t monsters. Just people. People _pretending_ to be monsters because the alternative was…

What?

She doesn’t understand. Those people made their choices. They knew what side they were fighting for. So did Ivano, they admitted as much themselves. But it _has_ to matter that they didn’t do it to hurt somebody. It doesn’t forgive it, doesn’t make it okay, but it does _matter_. Fighting a war changes all the rules. Fixing ships becomes a military declaration when all you’re really doing is making sure a machine runs right. Rey isn’t making a political statement when she gives BD-1 and oil bath, and Ivano isn’t—they’re like anyone on Jakku. Aren’t they?

_You know what that’s like._

Rey isn’t entirely sure what Ivano is to her. BD-1 calls them a companion, but that word seems too simple. Comrade, maybe, but that implies trust, reliability, the knowing that someone will always have your back. The only thing that’s ever really summed it up to her is simply ‘fellow scavenger’. They aren’t a slave, but it’s not as if they have any more choice in the matter when Plutt controls the food and the water. They have to survive. The only alternative is laying down and dying in the sand. So the one place you find yourself is the one place you never wanted to be and can’t ever leave. It’s just you, alone, forever and always, having to make the choice over and over when it’s never really been a choice in the first place.

Maybe she does understand, a little.

And Ivano’s still _Ivano_. They feel just like they always have when she reaches for them in the Force. Familiar. Bright. Warm. They didn’t have to tell her any of this but they did anyway and that—

That _definitely_ matters.

“Do you really think there’ll be a ship down there?” she asks as they cross into the Goazon Badlands, needing to think of anything else. Ivano has been quiet this whole time, letting Rey come to her own conclusions, and she’s thankful. “One that still works?”

“Starships are built to last,” Ivano explains. “The tech’ll be old, wiring’ll need a serious overhauling, plates might be needing replaced. Oh, and you’d have to get real creative about fuel if there ain’t any stores of it left.” They shrug, swerving to avoid a Teedo and its pack animal. “But yes. It’d still be perfectly capable of flying.”

Rey twists round to watch the Teedo shake its fist before being doused in a spray of sand. “That’s only if its intact.”

“Well, even if you learn how to fly, you ain’t never gonna fly in something that’s had a rock through the roof of it.”

“And what if there ain’t—I mean, isn’t anything?” Rey asks, grimacing in response to their amused grin. “I’m serious, Ivano.”

“As serious as a heart attack,” they agree and it’s strange to hear them do that. Rey’s AT-AT glints in the distance, heralding the end of their expedition, and as they speed towards it, Rey can feel Ivano gathering themselves up, something pulling itself taut in preparation for whatever will spill from their mouth next. Get used to pressure and you forget the pain of it until it finally releases and you're left with nothing but the ache.

She waits. Just like she did at the precipice overlooking Carbon Ridge when the voice told her to. It isn’t until they slow to a stop beside the AT-AT that the pressure finally crests.

“Never did actually answer your askings, did I?” the say, a little laugh in the middle of it. Trying to hide the brittleness underneath. If she concentrates, Rey can see it spiderwebbing across them, can imagine it breaking them from the inside out when they’re already so raw. She doesn’t want to hear it. But she doesn’t want Ivano to have to look like that either.

“Are you going to help me?” she asks. “Are you going to tell me why nobody ever leaves?”

“I can teach you to repair what we find, if you still want me to,” they admit. “Won’t exactly be a comprehensive education, but we gotta work with what we got. And if we did find a ship in Carbon Ridge, if you found a way to fly it, I’d do whatever I could to make sure it worked. That’s only if you want it, of course.” They pause and run a hand through their shaggy hair, blowing out a long breath towards the sand. “Technically, you could leave sooner than that, though. There is a way.”

“What the kriff was the point of today, then?” Rey asks, baffled.

“The point, pup, is to give you the choice. Learn to fix, learn to look after yourself while you’re out there…” They look at her. Look away. Wipe their palms on their leggings. “Or we find a way to get the deactivator wand off Plutt for that chip in you, and after you can stowaway as you please.”

“Chip?” Rey asks, and there’s a sinking feeling dropping her stomach all the way to the ground even while the rest of her floats above it. “What chip? What are you talking about?”

Ivano’s face is a horrible thing, grieved and angry and horrified all at once. “You really don’t know, do you?”

“Know _what_?”

And they say it all in a rush, like ripping off a bandage, like that’ll somehow make it easier. “Slaves have been implanted with them for decades. They’re—they’re put in you when you’re sold. It’s got a transmitter in it, tracking where you are, and if you go too far away from whoever owns you, they explode. Taking you with it.”

Rey stares at them. Searches for any hint of a lie. But there isn’t one. _O_ _f course_ there isn’t, because nothing is ever fair, because the galaxy is an ugly place and Jakku is no exception and the truth keeps _changing,_ over and over whether she wants it to or not, because Rey is a forgotten little girl who was sold by her parents and somebody implanted a _bomb inside her_ when she was _five years_ old and she—

She never even _knew_ —

And.

Rey jerks, shoving open the door to the speeder with a glancing touch that should be strange but somehow isn’t, and she’s stumbling over the lumps of sand between her and the place that she sleeps, BD-1 buzzing away inside her backpack, trying to help, trying to _be there,_ and she stumbles once and slumps all the way down, gasping in breaths as her skin _itches_ and she _remembers_ —

Nothing. She doesn’t remember anything at all.

“Kriff, fuck, _shit_ , are you—”

“Why me?” she forces out, twisting round and pushing away from Ivano. They stop as soon as they see what she’s doing, hands raised in supplication. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ivano swallows. “Penance, I suppose,” they say, but they say it like they aren't sure it's the truth _._

If there's even such a thing anymore.

They twist their hands round, not moving forward, just trying to get her to listen. “I would’ve told you before, I _swear_ , but I honestly thought you already knew. It’s not exactly a secret. That’s why nobody ever tries to leave. Scavengers like me stay cuz there ain’t nowhere else for us to go. You… you stay cuz you’ll die if you don’t.”

Rey twists her fingers into the cracked leather of her backpack to stop them tearing into her skin and tries to think back. Remembers those days pierced by madness and memories that weren’t hers and _runrunrunyouhavetoRUN._ It’s a smear of muted colour, long-since bled out and left to rot, so if anyone _had_ tried to tell her, the knowledge drained away a long time ago.

_It's all wrong._

Ivano crouches down, and they must have gone back to the speeder while she was losing herself in her head because they’re laying her staff down in the sand, watching her closely. “Those stories you always wanted to hear,” they say softly. “The ones with slaves rising up against their masters? They did that because they believed something better had to be on the other side of it. Whether for themselves, or for someone else, people need hope.” They push the staff towards her and lean back, blue eyes piercing in the red of the setting sun. “I don’t have a clue where you found yours, but you hold onto it, hear me? You need more than fuel and star metal to fly. And this chip, it doesn’t change a thing. We’ll find a way. However you wanna do it.”

Rey nods, distant and unhinged. Untethered. Splintered and unwound and so very, very lost.

Ivano hesitates. Waiting, probably, to see if she’ll ask them to stay. All she wants is to talk to BD-1—to not have to think about _anything_ anymore.

She sways to her feet and heads into her AT-AT. It’s never seemed so small to her before. It isn’t until a few minutes later, when the sound of Ivano’s speeder driving away hits her, that she puts down the backpack and opens it.

BD-1 carefully steps out and looks at her, antennae flattened. She sits beside him and strokes a hand over his head.

[“My broken sensor…”] BD-1 says. [“I can’t do a deep scan without it… I would’ve said, I didn’t _know_ —“]

“I didn’t think that,” Rey says, distantly surprised. “I didn’t think that at all.”

They curl in a little more. [“It isn’t fair.”]

“No. No it isn’t,” Rey whispers. “But it's not your fault. It’s Plutt’s fault. It’s…” She trails off. Feels something rising in her. Something in the emptiness where all her darkest thoughts lurk. That place she refuses to look, even with the comfort of the Force at her side, because if there’s a Light and a Dark and she’s always had _one_ , always had nightmares and hauntings chasing her every step, but the only light is BD-1, how can she delve into everything that’s supposed to be wrong?

She bites her lip and keeps running her hand across his chassis, letting him know she’s still _here_. Even with a chip in her that—

She surges to her feet and begins to pace, thinking, filling up every available space so there’s no room for anything else. Thinking about Mashra who taught her to read, and Ivano who always tells her what she asks, even if it takes them a while to do it. Thinking about BD-1 and Cal and being left alone with no hope, no end in sight, and she’s thinking about her parents and trying not to, but wondering, wondering, _wondering,_ speeding towards something unnameable, vast and _terrifying_ , placing her in front of the wall where 1,668 days have been painstakingly carved. Every day since the moment she woke up to nothingness and had every choice taken away.

(The voice says nothing at all.)

“I don’t want to stowaway,” she blurts, still strangely detached. Almost as if it isn’t herself saying it. The crash is coming, but maybe if she finds something to lift her she’ll avoid total ruination. “I don’t want someone else to decide where we go. Or risk them sending us back here.”

BD-1 clambers up to her shoulder and looks at the wall too. [“I don’t think I want to do that either,”] he agrees, pressing gently against the side of her head. She leans into the touch.

“You’re all I’ve got, BeeDee. I can’t ever risk being somewhere you can’t find me,” she says, and for the first time, she lets herself _feel_ what that really means. Her eyes burn. Her chest hurts. She curls her hand into a fist. “You’re all I’ve got because—”

Because—

And she makes herself finally listen—

She makes herself _say it_ —

“Because my parents aren’t coming back.”

She knows.

She’s always known, really.

_You aren’t supposed to be here._

“Parents don’t do that to their kids if they’re going to come back. They sold me. _They_ did that.” She gulps in a breath and clutches at her chest, feeling the way her heart is bruising against her ribs, listening to the space stretching out all around her in the Force. “It’s you. And it’s me.” She won’t cry. Not for _this_ , because—“It just won’t always be. We’ll find Cal, and he can teach me the ways of the Force the way he’s supposed to, and we’ll find Cere and Greez and Merrin, too. We’ll see the whole galaxy, and we’ll make sure nobody ever has to survive the way we’ve had to, and we can—we can—”

Her throat closes before she can finish the thought aloud and make it real, send it out into the sky like a dare nobody’s ever been brave enough to try. It’s _scary_ , thinking about this. Scarier than starving or fighting or scavenging or waiting for parents that will nevernever _never_ come back. Rey knows how to do those things. But she’s never done _this_ , never once imagined it would ever be possible. She has _so far_ to go. There can’t be enough hope in the galaxy to power her all the way through. Not when the rest of the galaxy is using it all up at the same time.

But she _wants_ , more than anything, what she wants more than anything in the universe is—

“We can live. We can be _happy_.”

She barely understands what that means. She wants to do it anyway.

Suddenly she’s aware of just how _tired_ she is. Exhaustion creeps into her limbs, steals the air from her lungs like the wind in a sandstorm. She’s been drained of all she is, running a marathon with no foreseeable end for months. Crossing the long-awaited finish line doesn’t feel like a victory at all. Only a single step towards an even greater ending. Or maybe a beginning.

BD-1 beeps softly, a gentle melody with no meaning but his own little trills. Still there. Still hers. The only thing that's really, truly _hers._

She raises her hand and rests it on the cool metal wall, dragging her thumb across the marks. Gouged into metal. Proof that they survived. That, despite everything, this planet hasn’t beaten them yet.

A slave. A scavenger. A survivor.

An orphan.

The answer is part of her now, knowledge woven into her bones, never to recede into the darkness again. That’s the thing about the Force. Once something’s there, it doesn’t ever leave. Not really. Cal’s been saying it too, over and over. Daily training. Changing your body. Configurating your whole way of thinking. Being a Jedi isn’t a thing you _do_. It’s how you _live_. The Force isn’t something you turn on and off—she doesn’t have to _use_ it.

She has to let it be a part of her.

So what’s stopping her?

_What if you’re hurt too?_

She pauses. And she realises.

BD-1 is still singing. Her droid, her _brilliant kriffing_ droid who gave her a healing stim just because she was hurt and needed it even though he didn’t know a thing about her, who ran in front of a Security Droid and _fought it_ even though it could have crushed him, who told her about Cal, about the most precious thing to him in the whole wide universe, and who’s still singing in a way that pulls at her muscles and keeps her head straight, and who spends all day stuck inside her backpack because the rest of this stupid planet would just use him for parts otherwise, and who’s never afraid to help her anyway, never _ever_ afraid to be there when she needs him.

Her droid who’s never doubted she'll be a Jedi someday. Who reminds her who she is whenever she loses it amongst all the other junk and muck.

And when she thinks about it like that, she's still hurting, she's still angry, she's still split wide open and lost in all the open sky that goes on until forever feels like a possibility _—_

But she's something else too.

“I want to try again,” she says, pulling back from the wall and looking to BD-1. “I mean, I want to try telekinesis again. Right now.”

BD-1 examines her. Zooming in and out. Taking in everything that she is. [“I want that too,”] is what he says. [“All of it.”]

Rey sniffs and wipes her eyes. “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

[“I’m glad you’re the one who found me,”] BD-1 says back, simple as anything, and briefly nuzzles against her hair before leaping off her shoulder and going to fetch the pen.

There's no proof at all this will work, no real reason it should when reality still feels skewed, a linchpin fallen loose and most everything crumbling down after. Somehow, she knows she has to try anyway.

An instinct. A _feeling_.

She doesn't think she's ever felt more or less than she does right now.

She sits with her legs crossed, waits for BD-1 to settle with the pen at his feet, and stretches out her hand. Focusses deep inside, ignores the dark space of _nothingnothingnothing_ —because it has nothing left it can take—and reaches even further. The Force swirls around and within her, answering her call, pulsing out in its own chaotic rhythm. It sparks into awareness and floods her body, finds all she is and makes it _real._ Meaning everything. Meaning nothing. Cradling her in its hold as much as it rises to her will.

 _I want to live_ , she reminds herself. _I want me and BeeDee to be **happy**. _

And she holds that tight, and she takes a breath, and from right there, right from everything she is, she _pulls_.

The pen twitches. Once. Twice. Skitters a few inches across the floor. Rey doesn’t stop, _can’t_ stop, because now the feeling is there and if she lets go she might forget. It’s like the Force has carried a piece of her outwards, tied it to the pen and is now trying to bring both back, linking them for this brief, intrinsic instant, regardless of the space between them. She tugs one more time ( _yes, yes, this is what we want_ ) and trusts that it will come.

And it does. It skids again, spins, then jerks upwards and lands in her waiting palm. Vibrating. Her fingers curl around it and it rests, the Force receding back into its natural path with a satisfied hum.

Just reaching out and picking it up.

[“I knew it,”] BD-1 beeps, jolting Rey out of her awed stillness. [“I knew it, I knew you could do it!”]

“I did it,” Rey agrees, slowly turning the pen between her fingers, breathless and wild with emotion. Jitters race up her spine and she laughs as BD-1 leaps at her, sweeps him up into a hug, lets herself be lifted to her feet by the burning imprint of energy in her veins. She did it. _She_ did.

_This is who we are. This is all we need to be. Run and run, but know you are never as alone as you might think._

_I’ll remember_ , she promises, giggling as BD-1 sings and wriggles delightedly in her arms. Aloud, she says, “C’mon, let’s see if I can do it again.”

BD-1 stills. Looks up at her for a moment, then drops his head against her collarbone. [“We’re going to be up all night again, aren’t we?”]

Rey just grins.

(For real this time.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh dip dudes. That all happened.
> 
> Yes, Ivano is mentioned once in the entirety of Star Wars lore. Yes, I decided to give them a plot-relevant background. I regret nothing. And I love them. And they love you and believe in you.
> 
> BD-1. He protec, he attac, but most importantly, he got complex moral quandaries to unpack. It's so interesting writing from his point of view. His mindset is sometimes more adult, sometimes more childish. It takes in everything and tries to lay it out in a standardised form, and, like a child, fixates on the idea of right and wrong. I love droids. More fics with them as POV characters please. Oh, and I'm sure it's not important he forgot about the whole encryption key thing. Ha ha. 
> 
> Yeah, that can't be important at all.
> 
> ~~I need to stop but the plot threads won't LET ME—~~
> 
> Anyway. Rey's gone through a lot, but that doesn't mean she isn't clinging onto hope with every scrap of her being. BD-1 is big for that, in case you didn't notice. This chapter sort of got away from me with all the introspection, but Force stuff is usually focussed inward and Rey needed to have the realisations she did in this chapter. Does this mean her issues with the Force are over? Heck no. But we'll get to that later.
> 
> On that note, next chapter we'll have skipped forward a couple years. I've got it all planned out, as well as the next two, and then she's officially freeeeee. Let's get this ship a-flying.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the comments and kudos! I smile like an idiot every time. Stay safe out there!


	6. Fall to Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a rough month. 
> 
> Have Rey making progress.
> 
> I regret nothing.

It’s raining, and rain on Jakku always means a storm. Clouds loom low and dark and heavy like crouching predators, their thunderous roars echoing into the deepest trenches, jagged bolts of lightning fusing sand to fulgurite. The ground drowns beneath the onslaught, a sheer weight that’s blinding in its intensity. Dunes become waterfalls. Flood threaten to overwhelm every crevice. All at once, scavengers find themselves united against a common enemy, seeking solidarity in their time of need, shelter and ceasefires hastily constructed with no permanence beyond what the weather will allow.

Rey _loves_ it.

She can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen rain and still have fingers left over. It’s different from a sandstorm; that reaching, burying pull that smothers the air itself. Storms are _alive_ , every furious, howling moment of them, and Rey never feels more alive than in the centre of their ferocity.

She’s high enough she can scent the ozone building in the clouds, feel the wind shoving at her feet, pressure pressing down on her shoulders as she edges along a narrow outcrop. The whispers are very quiet here. It makes it easy to concentrate on BD-1 and whatever lies ahead. She lost track of the path she was taking the moment the rain started.

So she’s forging her own.

The ledge sharpens into an incline and Rey allows herself to slide, oblivious to the easy grace in her movements. Heedless of how readily the Force answers her call on even the barest of instincts, helping to keep BD-1 balanced on her shoulder, rising to her aid the moment her reflexes have need of it. Her legs are prepared for the solid weight of the next foothold before it materialises out of the rain, and she balances with ease as soon as she lands. She pauses to shake the water out of her eyes and continues onwards.

Carbon Ridge groans beneath her palms, heavy and old. Tufts of brush snag at Rey’s feet, critters scurry between the cracks, the rock itself thrumming with disquiet. Mourning. It’s not the rain that bothers it. Nothing so fleeting could bother a mountain. Rey can feel the source buried and long-forgotten; this emptiness, this _silence_ right at the heart of it. Right at the spot the Imperials dug in and left their ruins behind.

It's not as frightening as it used to be. They’ve been searching a very long time.

Rey pauses, sensing a strange divot beneath her. She leans forward. A few feet below, the rock curves sharply inwards, creating a narrow slit that extends deeper into the mountain. She gestures and waits for BD-1 to register it.

[“Do you know how deep it goes?”] he asks, beeps ringing through the rain. She likes the rhythm the water makes bouncing off his chassis.

“Only one way to find out,” she yells back. “Ready?”

[“Yes!”] BD-1 replies cheerily. Rey grins. Hopefully Cal won’t be too confused when he finds out their droid has gained a penchant for leaping off tall things.

(It’s entirely Rey’s fault. She isn’t proud of it.)

She turns and lowers herself until she’s hanging from her fingertips, then lets her grip slide. Rock scratches at her skin, bumping against her ribs, sharp and searing against the chill of the storm, but like before, her body knows what to expect. She digs her hands in and slows next to the opening, waits for a particularly brutal gust to blow itself out, and swings herself up and around. The tempest chases her, another breeze fluttering through her clothes with a spray of water. She flicks a pulse back and watches the rain burst in a flurry of silver-blue, steps back before she can get too distracted by the game.

Once she squeezes through the opening, she finds herself in a small cave. It’s not the first they’ve found dotting the sides of Carbon Ridge. There’s always the chance it’ll be the last.

“See anything?” she asks, absently rolling her left shoulder as the bright buzzing blue of BD-1’s scanner lights up the walls.

[“It goes further than most openings we’ve found.”] Rey keeps a hold of him in her mind as he leans forward, head twisting this way and that. The replacement sensor—scavenged from a DD-13 medical droid and re-wired in—distorts the smooth lines of his natural design, but it works and BD-1 is happy, so Rey doesn’t mind it either. [“Do you feel anything?”]

Rey shakes her head. “There’s nothing nearby but us.”

[“Then let’s go.”]

BD-1 hops off and shines his torch through the darkness, revealing a snug pathway. They creep forward. Within moments, the sound of the storm raging outside dampens to distant drumbeats. The walls are rough and worn, forcing Rey to twist awkwardly and hunch down to avoid sharp edges. Pebbles crumble beneath her feet as she hauls herself forward. Eventually, the path widens out again, the ground cracked and brittle and filled with holes.

BD-1 is hovering at the edge of a particularly wide hole, scanner casting odd shadows across the walls that flicker and dance. Rey picks her way over and crouches next to him.

[“This one goes deep,”] he says at length. [“Deeper than I can see.”]

Rey eyes the sides of the hole critically. “There’s plenty of handholds. We could see what’s down there.”

[“Knowing your luck we’ll drop right into the room they kept their Security Droids.”]

“That happened _once_.” She nudges him. “And the only other time I found a droid I found you.”

BD-1’s scanner clicks off. [“I don’t trust anything on this planet.”]

“That’s probably the wisest thing you’ve ever said.” She reaches out again, following the natural pathways of the earth, feeling the weight of it, the age of it, listening for the hollow lies of metal. They know there’s _something_ down there. The mountain knows it too. “I think this is the best we’re going to find today.”

The shadows leap back into existence as BD-1 displays their map and makes a note. Rey eyes them as he processes, a hand rising to press at the back of her neck. She finds the top of her spine through her scarf, ridged and solid, then slides her index fingers up to the soft concave at the base of her skull before trailing down again, allowing the rest of her fingers to curl against it. Water drips down her back. She shivers.

[“Got it,”] BD-1 chirps. Pauses when he sees what she’s doing.

She lets go and lifts him onto her shoulder. “C’mon,” she says. “We need to drop off our scrap before we head back to the AT-AT.”

(They don’t talk about it.)

—

Her speeder rumbles between her thighs as she drives through the rain, ankles twisted to reach the pedals. She’d miscalculated the slope of the seat when she attached it, but since she only uses it for trips to Carbon Ridge, she isn’t going to waste time to fix it. She’d eventually grow into it, given time.

Rey has no plans to be on Jakku that long.

Niima Outpost appears from nowhere out of the storm. She skids to a stop at its fence line, breathing hard, charged like the thunderclouds above, and absolutely soaked. She grabs her backpack and scrap and heads towards the tents, pausing outside one to reposition a rock holding the tarpaulin down before its blown away, then ducking inside. The few people inside turn to note her arrival. Quickly, they look away. The storm must have scared most people off scavenging today.

She heads to an empty table in the corner and dumps her haul on top. There’s a price for polishing scrap using Plutt’s tools, but Rey has enough food to pay it. The sting of chemicals burns her nose. The thick, heavy gloves smother her hands. Her body aches. She’s very tired. But maybe this time they’ve finally found it, and she needs to be ready. So she sets aside her exhaustion, pretends not to notice the furtive glances cast her way, listens to the rain beat against the tarp, and keeps scrubbing.

She’s so focussed she doesn’t notice the warmth approaching until it’s right on top of her.

“Evening, little one.”

Rey looks up, already smiling. “Hey, Mashra. Need a share today?”

The Aqualish lowers herself to a seat at Rey’s side. “If it can be spared. You’ve gathered quite a haul in such terrible weather.”

“It’s not all from today.” Rey moves a selection of polished scrap over to Mashra—enough for two portions. “I’m surprised you made it here. How’s your leg?”

“Slowly healing. Too slowly.” Mashra runs her hand over the metal, shifting her leg beneath her in an effort to rest it comfortably. It was a nasty break. “I managed a small gathering before the storm trapped me here.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Enough to keep me fed, along with what you’ve given.” There’s a hesitant edge to Mashra’s tone Rey doesn’t understand, hot and cloying against her throat. She tries to swallow it away. “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Surviving.” Rey grimaces. “Still not enough to make me any taller.”

“A lost cause, perhaps,” Mashra hums, pincers twitching when Rey huffs.

She still goes out with Mashra occasionally, but between her training and frequent trips to Carbon Ridge, she hasn’t had a chance to help out. And for all she complains about her height, she’s grown a lot in the last three years. She can’t fit the places Mashra needs her to anymore. She isn’t useful.

It's nice to pretend, though, that Mashra is talking to her because she wants to, not because she’s sheltering from the storm or looking for a little extra food.

“You seem distracted.”

Rey pulls her gloves off and stretches out her stiff fingers. “I get distracted a lot.”

“It can be dangerous, getting lost inside your own head so much.” Mashra’s eyes rove around the interior of the tent, arms folded over the gifted scrap. “You lose track of what’s around you.”

Rey drifts her fingers over a sparker, skin tingling from the echo of a man who spent hours fixing it after a particularly nasty battle. He’d loved his TIE more than anything. “It’s dangerous not to listen to yourself too.”

Mashra tilts her head. “You are an odd one.”

“Oh, don’t worry. That’s entirely my doing.”

It’s different seeing annoyance on an Aqualish’s face than on a human’s, but its red-sky-morning hue stays the same. BD-1 buzzes against Rey’s knee. She hides a grin.

Mashra turns to give Ivano an unimpressed look. “I see your penchant for interrupting private conversations hasn’t lessened.”

“Ain’t never gonna miss the chance to talk with my two favourite females,” Ivano replies, spraying water everywhere as they shake out his hair.

Mashra mutters something under her breath in Aqualish. Rey studiously examines her scrap and doesn’t giggle. Much. Ivano and Mashra talk to Rey, but they don’t really like each other, and the resulting relationship is strange to say the least. BD-1 thinks they’re having sex. Rey would really rather forget the slideshow her droid compiled to explain the whole concept.

It had _pie charts_ , for fuck’s sake.

Ivano grins at Rey as they scrape their tresses back into a pony tail, a few loose strands clinging to their forehead. It makes them look a lot younger than they are. “Wanna tell me what she said?”

“Not really.” Before it can devolve into another argument, she quickly adds, “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Fair to middling,” Ivano replies, eyes fixed on the Rodian sitting one table over who has conspicuously stopped his movements. Ivano is as bony as ever, but their skin looks healthy and there’s no sunken quality to their eyes, so Rey doesn’t press. “I can see you’re both doing fine for today. How’s your little project coming along, pup?”

Mashra perks. She might not know of Rey’s frequent trips to Carbon Ridge, but she sure as hell knows about the flight simulator programme Rey unearthed a couple years back and her obsession with learning to fly every starship in its databanks.

(This isn’t what Ivano’s talking about, but it’s close enough to the truth.)

“It’s boring now,” Rey says honestly enough, grinning bashfully when Ivano lets out a crow of laughter and Mashra tuts. “It doesn’t do anything new.” She hesitates, briefly glancing to the Rodian. There’s another boy about Rey’s age sitting there as well. He looks familiar for some reason. “I might’ve found a way to get it to, though.”

“Oh?” Ivano blows a sodden strand of hair off their nose. “Breaking into the system, are we?”

“Something like that.”

“You should not encourage this,” Mashra interrupts with a pointed look at Ivano.

“I ain’t encouraging anything. _You_ try and stop her once she sets her mind on something.”

They always agree, at least, on Rey’s stubbornness.

BD-1 buzzes against Rey’s leg again. _Rude_.

Rey hides another smile.

She lets Ivano pick through her pile and continues scrubbing, answering dutifully as they quiz her on each starship part they come across. True to their promise, they’ve taught Rey as much as they can, and she’s glad she gave them the chance to do so because Ivano _loves_ talking about ships, eyes bright and smile loose at the corners, comments spilling from their mouth like nothing can hold them in.

It makes her angry. Furious. She tries not to let it grow, because there’s already enough rage in her blood and the Empire is long gone anyway, but maybe if it’d never existed in the first place, Ivano would have what Rey and BD-1 spend all their sand-soaked days dreaming of.

“You have your head firmly stuck in the clouds. I don’t know why I bother,” Mashra sniffs. She twists away and settles her leg atop the bench, massaging her fingers into her knee.

Even that clear dismissal doesn’t bother Ivano. “There’s a beauty to it,” they say, running their finger along the nav panel Rey ripped out of an A-Wing. “All these little pieces don’t mean much of anything when separated, but mix and mould them together, and you create something capable of miracles.”

Mashra sends her a pleading look. Rey shrugs. “It makes sense to me,” she says. Her scrap lies in a pile forgotten as she watches Ivano, fascinated by the glow radiating off them in their joy.

“That’s cuz you think the right way.” Ivano sends her a wink. “You’ve got the guts to be a pilot, but make sure you remember this too, pup. You ever get your hands on a ship, take care of her, and she’ll take care of you.”

“I will,” she promises.

She ends up spending the rest of the evening with them, muscles unwinding as they bicker and break the tired monotony of dirt and metal. The storm breaks eventually, as storms always do, and when the roofs are silent and moons are beginning to rise, Rey bids them goodnight and heads to Plutt to hand in her scrap.

She doesn’t miss the way the other scavengers give her a wide berth. She doubts Ivano and Mashra miss it either. She can taste the acid on her tongue.

_It's better this way,_ she convinces herself. _I never needed them before. It’s better I’m apart._

_But not alone._

Rey grins up at Plutt with all her teeth while BD-1 hisses in her backpack. _Not alone._

—

[“Can we hear him play tonight?”]

“Go for it, BeeDee.”

Cal appears in his usual space amidst the AT-AT, gently picking at the strings of a hallikset and unaware of his observers. The image distorts and Merrin comes into view. She touches Cal’s shoulder as she passes and they share a smile before she walks off, disappearing.

Rey tears her eyes away. BD-1 stays perfectly still. He never gets tired of seeing Cal’s face.

Music washes through the room, the hallisket’s chords and Cal’s hums accompanying Rey as she waters her plants, packs, then begins her evening stretches. The visor of her old X-Wing helmet glints in the glow of the hologram, reflecting wisps and whorls of blue over silver and sand, little markers to light her way. Peaceful.

There are definitely worse things to fall asleep to.

When she’s finished her routine, BD-1 slides a sensor over to her.

[“Tomorrow?”] he asks.

“Tomorrow,” she agrees.

Before getting into her hammock, she carves another mark onto the wall. 3,139. 1,471 days since she began searching for a way into Carbon Ridge. Ivano used to take her, point out what they could remember, but ever since she built her speeder she’s gone herself. It’s easier that way. She and BD-1 have found fragments; splintered metal, crushed droids, bones beneath the rubble—nothing that leads to the complex Ivano described. There’s just so much space to cover.

(Well it’s a _mountain_ , isn’t it?)

She brushes a tiny chip of metal out of the new groove, rubs it between her fingers. Crumbles it to dust. The marks used to record the number of days she’d waited, every line another wound on her battered, harrowed heart. Now, it’s mostly habit. Ritual and reminder. Something to glide her calloused fingertips along and think _this is where I was. This is where I am. Someday, this is where I’ll be._

The number rises, but it feels more like counting down, measuring her existence in increments always heading towards an end. A final mark.

If the cave turns out to lead nowhere, they’ll just have to try again.

She slips into her hammock. BD-1 keeps watching Cal. She closes her eyes and allows herself to drift off to sleep with the gentle thrum of BD-1’s presence and Cal’s voice lulling her down.

She still has a long way to go, but Cal is there to help carry her.

—

_Nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. Nothing to lose._

The voice is feverish and afraid, every iteration echoing down to the spongiest parts of her skeleton. She presses into her hiding spot, hunched in a tiny nook with BD-1 crammed between her legs, knuckles white where they grip her split staff, barely breathing as the dead-ender passes. She can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. They’re biting at their fingers, clawing at their face, mumbling nonsensical strings of numbers as they stumble on bloodied feet and clutch dented, dust-smeared armour to their chest. The Force moves through them strangely, sluggishly, pouring out in a grey fog that tries to cling and sink, sorrow and rage and terror flooding off their skin. It tastes like cold ash and salt.

Rey watches and wonders if Ivano knew this person, once upon a time. She’s never asked. They’ve never dared to think it.

The dead-ender stumbles off, flickering outline reflecting their broken mind. Misshapen, gnarled and insane, and Rey knows that’s why they’re _dangerous._

_Nothing to lose._

She uncurls from her hiding spot. The chasms leading to the mountain are dense and maze-like, twisting spires of rock arching above her head, threatening to crumble at any moment. In the damp heat of storm and desert, the air distends, swells with mirages, creating oasis after oasis where there’s only dirt to be found. Red, gold and brown mesh into fake, crystalline blue, and Rey has to keep blinking the sweat from her eyes to make sure she can see where she’s going. The walls are silent. She has no idea how the dead-enders have survived so long in this wasteland.

“That _was_ human, wasn’t it?” she whispers, head angled close to BD-1’s sensors.

BD-1 buzzes more than beeps, wary of echoes. [“I think it was, at some point. It must have been.”]

Rey keeps her staff close and doesn’t know how to answer.

They make their way upwards, trusting distance and sweltering heat to mask their presence the higher and more exposed they get. Without the rain impeding them, it takes much less time to reach the cave, but it feels twice as long to Rey, and she’s panting and exhausted by the time she tumbles inside, groaning in relief at the feeling of cool earth beneath her.

“Even if that hole doesn’t go anywhere, let’s stay here for the rest of the day,” she groans.

[“No way. You _know_ how boring that would be.”]

He pushes at her shoulder, forces her to sit up. She does so with little grace and fumbles to get her water bottle out of her backpack. A crack is beginning to grow on the left side of her lip. She pokes at it with her tongue. “We could do some cave paintings. I heard someone say there’s a settlement where they paint all over the walls. I bet it’s pretty.”

BD-1 perks up. [“Could we go look sometime?”]

The crack splits. Rey takes a small sip of water and shakes her head, ignoring the taste of blood. “It’s too far.” She doesn’t smile, because it would hurt and BD-1 doesn’t like it when she pretends, but she leans over and pats his head. “Don’t worry. I bet there are plenty of places in the galaxy with paintings all over the walls. You said the Zeffo left a bunch of them behind.”

[“Yes, but we should definitely do it ourselves someday. You’d be really good at it.”]

She hitches up a crooked grin. “Thanks, BeeDee. We’ll put it on the list.”

BD-1 wiggles happily in places and trots off towards the back of the cave. Rey heaves herself up, stretches languidly, and follows.

Climbing rock, as Rey has discovered, isn’t really that different from delving into starships. The same testing handholds, the same pressure on all sides, the same experience of cutting herself off from the rest of reality, treading through a distant dream of her own design. She burrows, trusts BD-1 to light the way down, and loses herself to the rhythm. The rock cuts slower, but just as deeply as metal. It helps keep her focus when the only light is her droid.

It isn’t until BD-1 speaks, however, that she starts paying attention.

[“We’ve been climbing a while…”]

Rey pauses, allowing her grip to loosen enough she can rest. Her left shoulder is starting to ache the way it always does when she uses it for too long, seizing up and sending pain spiking towards her elbow and down her back. She lets it dangle.

“I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing,” she manages. “I can’t concentrate like this.”

[“We might actually have to stay here the rest of the day if you get too tired to climb back up,”] BD-1 says, and she can feel him twisting, trying to angle his head so he can see what’s below them.

“Wouldn’t be the first time. At least we have food this time.” She curls and uncurls her fingers, winces from the strain. “I’ll let you know if I start getting too tired.”

Time drifts. Liminal. Unobtrusive. Cotton clings to her thoughts, any sense of identity sucked back into the abyss. She’s floating and impermanent, tunnelling her way into the dark, only the flashes of pain tethering her to reality. Until her hand touches metal and she nearly falls off the wall in surprise.

BD-1 whirs in distress, crowding closer to her neck as she regains her balance. [“Are you okay? What happened?”]

“Look,” she gasps out. She’s got her hand around it, a twisted spike of metal spat out of the rock, stabbing into the opposite wall. “This—This isn’t starship metal.”

[“I can see more down below,”] BD-1 says, hushed. Electricity sparks in her veins, in his circuits. Rey forgets about the pain entirely.

The further down they go, the more rock becomes metal. Twisted girders and ripped panels, loose cables and gutted wiring. As if the base has been working its way into the mountain, intertwining until the two are inseparable. Eventually, BD-1 signals there’s something down below. A gap. She wedges herself between the rock wall and what looks like the remains of a power generator, peering into the crack. BD-1 shines his torch down. Metal reflects back.

[“We can fit, but we couldn’t climb back out this way,”] BD-1 says slowly. His holo-map beams into existence, highlighting the downward slope and gap of nothingness quickly cut off by what seems to be a floor. [“You could jump, but I don’t think you could get a grip.”]

Rey presses a thumb into her shoulder, rubbing small circles into the joint. “You and Cal did stuff like this all the time, didn’t you?”

[“Yes.”] BD-1 hesitates. [“We knew we could call for help if we got into trouble though.”]

Rey grimaces. Her eyes stay fixed on the gap. The spark in her blood spirals into her heart, her lungs, her gut—not quite fear, though it could easily be mistaken for fight or flight. A quietly relentless, anxious energy. That unstoppable urge to _move_.

_Run. Run. They’re so close. Can’t you feel their breath?_

The metal floor isn’t an end. She can feel the space that opens up around it, stretching in two directions, but it’s hard to tell how far when there’s no life to the metal, no movement in the air that fills it. Whatever’s down there, it hasn’t been disturbed in a very long time. No chance of someone stumbling across them.

“I think… it’s up to you,” she decides.

BD-1 recoils in surprise. [“Me?”]

“The last thing I want is for you to get stuck somewhere again. If we go down and there’s no way out…” She trails off, rubbing at the back of her neck. Clenching her fingers. “I want to go. I’d rather know. But I won’t make you if you don’t want to. We can rest for a bit, then head back up and try to find something else. We can’t go much further down.”

She glances over to see her droid’s antennae dip. His sensors flick back and forth over the hole.

_Nothing to lose._

[“Let’s g̷̻͌ǫ̶̙͘͘,”] BD-1 says, and his voice only shakes a little. [“You’re right. I’d rather know.”]

Rey doesn’t ask him if he’s sure. She slides her backpack off and pushes it into the crack as far as she can reach, then repositions until she’s slithering after it feet-first. The gap is narrow enough she has to turn her head to fit. Briefly, she panics, thinking she’s going to get stuck _here_ , how stupid is _that_ —but gravity does its job and she falls.

She stumbles on the landing, the aches from climbing for hours reasserting themselves with a vengeance. No time for that. She stretches and joins BD-1 in curiously glancing around. They’re in a corridor. Rock has broken through the ceiling, but that’s the only natural thing about it. Unlike the wide halls of Star Destroyers, this space curls inwards on itself, bending under the immutable weight of Carbon Ridge, pressured and dense. Dust motes flicker through the torchlight. There’s a fine layer of them on everything. Rey wrinkles her nose and pulls her scarf up over it.

“This place feels dirty.”

[“Dangerous?”]

Rey reaches out—slowly. Carefully. Silence answers. She swallows. “No. I don’t think so. But nothing good happened here. I should keep my hands to myself.”

BD-1 nods. [“What way?”]

“Can you orient us from where we came in? Ivano said the hangar was towards the east side of the base. Right above where all the gullies are now.”

While BD-1 processes, Rey peers through the gloom. Exhaustion and excitement pull her mind in opposite directions, cloying and sharp in equal measure. This is it. This is _it_. But for some reason, all she can think about is Ivano crawling his way out of the dirt into the blaring sun and finding only more war and death. This places _aches_ in its own emptiness. A monument to the ruination the Empire wrought—is _still_ wreaking, even when its dead and gone. How do you ever come back from that?

She doesn’t think about how this place might be her grave.

[“This way,”] BD-1 beeps, angling his head in the right direction.

Rey takes a slow breath in and out. “Alright. Stay close.”

The corridor branches off and they follow it, always heading east. Rey’s careful not to move anything when they come across a collapse, all too aware of how much sand and rock is pressing down on them, opting instead to squeeze her way through or find an alternate route. Beyond that, it feels _wrong_ to move anything. Even her footprints in the dust feel like an aberration. The whole place is still. Stale. Buried in ways that go beyond sand and dirt. There isn’t evidence of animals—certainly nothing of the dead-enders. It makes her heart sink, but she doesn’t mention it for now.

She’s too busy dodging around the bodies.

The first time she comes across a skeleton she rears back from the shock of it. It’s wearing a dark uniform that’s only just started to decay where the rest of the body hasn’t, jammed between two boulders, one hand reaching out, skull cracked and empty. It just sits there. Dead.

“I can’t hear anything,” Rey says when she realises she’s been staring far too long. The root of her unease finally clicks into her head. She’s grown so accustomed to the desperate whispers urging her to listen. Their absence picks at her bones. “It’s so _quiet,_ BeeDee.”

[“There aren’t any echoes?”]

“No, there are echoes.” She can see them, little bright spots on the other side of her vision. “They’re just… quiet. Like they don’t know if they want to be heard.” She awkwardly squeezes past the skeleton and ducks into the room beyond. There are tables and screens all over the place. “That probably doesn’t make much sense.”

[“You and my Cal never make much sense,”] BD-1 tells her as he hops onto a table. [“Most organics don’t.”]

“Gee, thanks.”

[“It’s okay. I like you anyway.”]

Click and sync. Rey relaxes back into herself with a snort and lets him skitter around, examining the various items scattered about. Her eyes have adjusted by now so she wanders around the room, stepping over broken glass scattered from some sort of tube, wondering at the calculations and notes recorded on piles of paper. She steps up to one of the desks. She doesn’t recognise any of the objects on it. “Maybe I should listen. It might give me an idea of where we need to go.” BD-1 doesn’t answer. A knot twists her throat. “BeeDee?”

[“Over here.”]

Rey swallows the sour taste. Shoves it to the back of her mind as BD-1 trots back into view. “Find anything?”

BD-1 shakes his head. [“Will it be bad if you listen? Will it hurt?”

“Not awful, I don’t think. Nobody died in here.” She glances back and grimaces. “Okay, nobody died _because_ of anything in here. I won’t know for sure until I do it. Everything feels… dulled here. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like something’s reached in and sucked all the life out of it.”

BD-1 nods and steps back as she lays her hand on the desk

and

lets

the

feelings

through.

—searching, samples and ideas and mistakes, no, can’t make mistakes don’t you know what they’ll do, what is this for, what are we looking for, what do they expect us to find, the sun, I miss the sun, the sky? Sneak out later, they don’t know, they haven’t realised, must stay hidden, oh no, oh no, _they’re_ here, something to show, need to show I’m useful I need to be here there’s nowhere else nowhere else please don’t kill please I don’t want to die, I just want to _know_ , I want to learn, there’s nothing wrong with that, but now they’re here, they’re going to kill us, we’re all going to die, maybe I can make a deal, maybe I can—maybe I can—

Rey flinches back, skin crawling, eyelids fluttering. The stress and fear and resolve linger for a moment, clinging to her synapses before being carried off into the Force. Nestling into her breast.

“They were exploring the unknown regions,” she says slowly, picking apart the images and sounds as best she can, taking the person and filtering them down to facts and figures. Unjustly quantifiable. “Scientists, mainly. Not soldiers. But they weren’t entirely sure what they were looking for. They just examined what other people brought back.” She sinks back into the fear. Scared of the battle, yes, but before that… “I think there were other Force-sensitives here. The ones you told me about.”

BD-1 is quiet for a few moments. [“They must have been looking into something related to the Force. They wouldn’t send an Inquisitor otherwise.”]

“They weren’t here all the time though. Just checking in.” Rey taps at the desk. “I suppose if this place was a secret they wouldn’t want anyone wondering where their Force-users were going.”

[“Did you find out where the hangar is?”]

“Oh, right.” She shakes herself, pushing away her curiosity for now. “Not exactly. There was something about wanting to go outside, though. Maybe there’s an access tunnel nearby? I don’t think they were allowed to roam about much.” She grimaces. “They definitely weren’t supposed to go outside.”

She can hardly imagine it. How are you supposed to know you’re alive if you can’t see the sky?

[“We should check for the access tunnel. It might give us a way out.”]

Rey blinks. She’d almost forgotten they were stuck down here. “You’re right. I think I know the way.”

They leave the room, following the footsteps of a ghost. The clawing, desperate need for fresh air. Rey isn’t sure if it comes from her or the memories of the man. She flexes her grip on the Force, reminding herself _yes, everything is where I left it. Just because it’s hidden doesn’t mean it isn’t there._

She comes to a stop, guided by instinct. There’s a grate in the wall. She pries it off. BD-1 presses up against her cheek and shines his torch in. There’s enough space for her to crawl comfortably, so she makes her way in. It stretches out for a while before angling upwards, and eventually they come up against a rock. She places her hand on it, pressing herself into the stone, feeling how far it extends.

Sensing the outside world beyond.

Rey _pushes_. Little by little, the rock begins to squeeze free until it falls away entirely, and Rey is almost blinded by the sunlight. She soaks it in, smiling to the breeze that greets her alongside the vibrant, cerulean blue sky. Tantalising and so very real. They’re still high off the ground, poking out the side of the mountain. Vertigo tilts her into the fall. She forces herself back. Rubs the back of her neck to rid herself of the strange prickle of disappointment.

“Do you know where we are?” she asks.

[“Not… completely.”] BD-1 scans the horizon, sensor blinking. [“But if we come out this way we can backtrack.”]

“Good.” There’s a long climb to get down. No wonder the man’s memories never showed him leaving. “Now we know we aren’t going to die a horrible death, let’s keep looking.”

[“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine.”]

“Oh, ha, _ha_.”

BD-1 skitters away before she can pretend to hit him. She lets him go. There’s a particularly hefty looking rock nearby, so she reaches out and lifts it over to block the entrance again. The feeling of sunlight stays even once she’s back in the corridor, settling the nervous jumps in her stomach. Reminding her skin of warmth and life and all the good things the dark tries to make her forget. She keeps it safe—right at the heart of her.

(This encounter is the first, and in the end, there are three.)

Bolstered by their discovery, they continue onwards, climbing up and down through the levels, past blockages, delicately avoiding skeletons and leaving the echoes of the dead to rest. If there was ever a discernible order to the base, it’s long gone now. Just like everything else. She finds a bunk room next to another research centre—a body in one and an arm in the other. Remains lay contorted amidst the rubble, and Rey starts to realise how lucky Ivano was to get out at all. Especially when she comes across other bodies with no injuries besides blackened bone in their chests and skulls.

She’s imagining the smell of burning, but it stings her sinuses all the same. She tries not to look too closely. Tries to remember Ivano is alive and well and thinking of _what-ifs_ won’t change anything.

It never has before.

Claustrophobia settles its presence on every ceiling. Rey isn’t afraid of tight spaces, but the lingering grief of the mountain above intrudes on her thoughts every moment, impossible to forget. It winds down into her chest and presses her onwards—but it isn’t until BD-1’s had to correct their course for the fourth time that Rey realises she’s trying to head somewhere specific. Not being pushed. Being _pulled_.

“Wait,” she says, body angled like a compass tied to north. “Wait. I think there’s something over this way.”

[“What kind of ‘something’?”] BD-1 asks, rightfully perplexed.

“I’m not sure.” She grimaces. Her instincts offer no help and the voice doesn’t either, only hints at a wary sort of curiosity that belies any certainty. The Force is even less help. Urging her onwards to an end without form. “It’s like… something knows we’re here? Or maybe wants to be found?”

BD-1 whines. [“I knew it. I knew if there was a Security Droid we’d find it.”] He shoves his head against her ear. [“We had enough trouble the last time!”]

“Oh, hush.” Rey raps a knuckle against his chest and rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to throw you to the mercy of one of those things again. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s alive—like, organic alive.”

[“I don’t think anything other than us has been alive down here for a long time.”]

“All the more reason to find out what it is.”

BD-1 shifts from foot to foot before sagging in defeat. [“Alright. But if anything stands up and starts walking towards us, we’re running.”]

“Fair enough.”

[“Why do I have to be your common sense?”] BD-1 wonders as Rey swivels and walks on.

“Because I have to be yours,” Rey answers. Now she has a name for the feeling, she’s reasonably sure of where she needs to go. The Force will guide her when everything else fails. “I still have to stop you from leaping out my backpack and attacking Plutt every time he’s nearby.”

BD-1 tilts his head. [“I don’t see how that’s an issue.”]

Rey leans under a half-closed door, blinking away the stars popping in her vision from the reflected light of BD-1’s torch. Ripples of her laughter echo in their wake. “That’s sort of my _point_.”

[“He’d deserve it,”] BD-1 grumbles.

“Obviously. But I sort of need him to live.”

[“That makes him even worse.”]

“It won’t be forever, BeeDee,” she says as she’s lead down another corridor, poked and prodded towards an innocuous looking doorway. “And then he’ll never be a problem again.”

As soon as she steps into the room, BD-1’s scanner ignites, bathing them in blue. It’s another specimen room, though the air inside feels… different. Remnants of ephemera bleed into the walls, make her think of a throne room and a cry for help, a flash of a nightmare that was never hers. The image slides away like finely woven silk, fluttering out of reach, leaving her bereft and cold. Trapped with an answer she doesn’t know the question for.

She grabs the doorway, breathing in the thick material of her scarf. Forcing herself into the present before anything else can steal her away.

[“I can’t see anything,”] BD-1 says. His scanner clicks off. Rey’s glad for the darkness.

Just as she’s turning her head, she catches it. A glint in one of the darkest corners, driving scarlet back into her vision. Cautiously, she moves closer. It looks like some kind of gem. She’s heard they’re valuable in other parts of the galaxy. Some of the traders who come to Jakku wear rings with gems the size of her thumb. They look pretty, but Rey’s never entirely understood why someone would pay so much for something you can dig out of the ground yourself.

BD-1, however, lets out a string of shocked beeps. [“That’s a kyber crystal!”]

“It’s a _what?_ ” Even as she asks, she darts forward, crouches down and reaches out to touch it—

And snaps her hand back, eyes wide.

[“It’s red,”] BD-1 says, leaping off to get a closer look. He glances at her. [“Only bad people have red ones.”]

“Yeah… Yeah, I—I mean, Cal explained it.” She rubs at her ears, tongue locked against the _scream_ assaulting her senses. She’s actually a little surprised BD-1 can’t hear it. She knows grief, knows anger and sadness and pain, but she’s never felt it so viscerally before. She’s never felt it from something that’s still alive.

[“My Rey?”]

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. The scream breaks, just for a moment, into a wailing sob.

“It’s asking for help,” she realises.

[“It’s calling to you?”] BD-1 asks, alarmed.

Rey screws her eyes shut. Leashes herself to the rolling lightning keeping BD-1 alive, and dives down into the noise. Shapes and sounds rush against her senses, a miasma of chaotic movement that rips and tears because it needs to get it _out,_ it never wanted this, never asked for it, just wanted—just _needed_ —out there, out there out there out there but it’s too hurt now, too hurt and too broken and too _wrong_ —

“No,” Rey blurts, unsure for a moment who she’s talking to. She shakes herself and turns to her droid, blocking out the kyber crystal’s endless cries. “No, it isn’t asking me to use it. It just wants me to help.” She grimaces and rubs at her arms. “How am I supposed to help a crystal?”

BD-1 wiggles a helpless shrug. [“I don’t know. I don’t remember my Cal ever talking about this. Kyber crystals are only supposed to connect with their user.”]

Her fingers tingle. The Force turns fluid around her, bending, shaping, moulding itself to her stiff shoulders. She counts her heartbeats in groups of five.

(She can hear something else beating along in time.)

“I think we should take it with us,” she says suddenly, barely aware of the intention until its out her mouth and tangible. “It’s… important. It feels important. I don’t think it was ever actually used by anyone. It’s not from a lightsaber.”

[“I’m starting to really not like this place,”] BD-1 comments as she tears a scrap off her shirt.

“Yeah,” Rey agrees wearily. The kyber crystal still screams and cries as she inches her hand closer. She’s careful to keep the fabric covering her skin as she bundles the crystal up, gently whispering to it like BD-1 does for her on Bad Days, like she does for BD-1 on Even Worse Days. Surprisingly, it actually seems to help. The biting edges of its grief dull in her palm, acidic regret leaking through the buzzing scarlet glow, and by the time she’s nestled it safely in her backpack, its sobs have quietened to little more than a whisper. Relieved to have been found. Easy to raise her shields against.

“I won’t use it,” she says to BD-1. “It doesn’t want me to, and I definitely don’t want to either. We’ll just keep it safe. Maybe Cal or Cere or Merrin will know what to do with it.”

BD-1 nods and clambers back onto her shoulder. [“Come on. We have a couple more hours of daylight. Let’s keep looking.”]

Funnily enough, what draws them to the final encounter isn’t the Force, but Rey’s nose.

With the air being so stale, everywhere, all the time, she catches the shift the moment it’s there and raises her head with a frown. BD-1 is skittering around a crumpled door to what they assume is an elevator, trying to gauge a way through, so he doesn’t notice until he turns back to her.

[“My Rey? What is it?”] His head twitches back and forth. [“It’s not another weird thing, is it?”]

Rey snorts. “No. I can smell something.” She gestures. “It’s this way.”

The scent leads to a room at the end of the corridor, a crack lining the edge of the door. She wedges her staff in and forces it all the way open, nearly crashing face first into the wall afterwards. Once she’s caught herself—and glared at BD-1 for laughing—she looks inside.

Half of the room is just rockfall, the mountain eating its way through the metal walls. Barrels lay in haphazard heaps, some split open, their contents long-since dried out from exposure, but when she pushes at one still standing, she can hear liquid sloshing about inside.

[“There goes out fuel problem.”]

“What was it you were saying about my bad luck?” Rey asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

[“We still haven’t found a ship. Just an easier way in. And a crystal that apparently screams.”]

“Well, yeah. But they’d keep fuel near the ships, wouldn’t they?”

They look at each other for a moment, then dart back down the corridor.

“Think I can move it?” she asks, already dropping her backpack to the side and rolling out her shoulders in preparation.

[“Most of the supports are already loose,”] BD-1 says, skittering back to huddle beside the safety of her backpack. [“If you can pull them all the way free, you just need to make sure the door won’t fall on top of us.”]

Rey nods. The supports will be hidden on the sides, allowing the doors to slide into the wall. She raises her hands and exerts as much pressure as she can muster, feet planted and back straight, attention fixed on the frame as the metal screeches and bends under her will. There. Right there. Cracks. Weakness. She twists the Force around them, blinks the sweat out of her eyes and _twists_ , immobile even when the door jerks and teeters dangerously, metal tearing against metal. Another nudge and the door sways a final time, hesitating an instant before physics completes the fall and it tumbles into the shaft.

She winces when she hears it crash to the bottom. “That’s a pretty long fall,” she mutters, banking the energy into her aching muscles to aid the strain. She’s out of breath again. “So, up or down?”

[“I vote whatever way is easiest.”]

“Up it is.” She catches his look as she bends down to grab her backpack. “What? It’s easier to climb up than down. You can see where you’re going.”

[“If you say so.”]

“Well I’m the one climbing and I do say so.”

Unfortunately, when they get to the next set of doors, they’re sealed tight.

“Do we keep climbing?” Rey wonders, twisting her neck to examine the shaft. She can see the mangled remains of the door at the bottom—can sense what already lay crushed underneath. Higher up, rock has broken through again, though from deliberate collapse or time, she doesn’t know. They’re starting to run out of options.

[“Hang on,”] BD-1 says, stretching his neck up to peer at something on the wall. [“I think this is another vent.”]

She pulls herself to it and peers inside. Wrinkles her nose. “It’ll be tight.”

[“Better to know, right?”]

The vent grate is added to the pile at the bottom. Rey mutters a rueful apology while BD-1 skitters in and helps tug her backpack through the opening from the other side. Rey twists herself in after, making sure to get her arms in front so they won’t get trapped at her sides. No way an adult would be able to fit in here.

[“It’s all underground so they’d have to filter air through somehow,”] BD-1 says as she wiggles forward. It’s comforting to hear him speak when the only proof of his presence is the outline of light around her bag. [“The one we found earlier must be an intake system. This is just for circulation.”]

“Right,” she says, panting from the exertion. Her shoulder is really starting to hurt. So are her feet. She’s lost all sense of time inside this place. Maybe that’s the point of it. There’s no room for wayward thoughts when the walls are grey and the lights are dull and every movement is catalogued and regulated, stamping down on free thought before it has a chance to grow. Nothing new can develop when everything remains the same.

Eventually, BD-1 signals there’s a way out and lets Rey keep going until she’s level with it. It takes a bit more manoeuvring, but she gets her hand against the grate and shoves it free of its screws. There’s a second of silence—and it bangs against the ground. The echo just keeps going.

She swings out the vent, drags her backpack out with her, and catches BD-1 when he leaps out after. He’s in still in her arms when he jerks, sensors fixed behind her. She turns. Her mouth drops open.

It’s the hangar.

A lot of the roof has caved in, and there’s debris and bodies everywhere, but there’s also _ships_. Cracked, damaged… broken ships. Empty husks only slightly better than the wrecks she scavenges in the Graveyard and Badlands. Rey rakes a hand through her hair, ignoring the tangles, embracing the pain. Trapped staring as the enormity of forever unravels before her, clawing its fingers into her skull, lovingly caressing the back of her neck—

She digs her nails in. Not yet. Tomorrow is still another day away. She needs to concentrate on _now_. “C’mon,” she says and shifts BD-1 onto her shoulder. He presses against the side of her head. She leans into the support. “Let’s look around. We might find something useful.”

The hangar isn’t big with so much rock crumbling into it, but it was once, and that cavernous expanse dogs Rey’s every step. Mocking her with everything that once was. TIE fighters lay beside each other, not quite destroyed, but unusable anyway. It’d be a nightmare trying to explain why she was flying around in a TIE fighter. Hilarious, maybe, for a moment. If she could see the looks on their faces before they shot her out of the air. She picks her way past them and finds only more rubble. The bigger, less conspicuous transports must have taken the worst of the collapse. Whether from dust or light or metal, even the rock seems to have transmuted into that stupid Empire grey. She turns away, hands clenched at her sides.

The weirdest, if still unhelpful find, comes in the form of Republic ships.

“Why’d the Empire have these?” she asks, peering through the cracked viewscreen of a Y-Wing. One of its engines is missing.

[“Captured, maybe? Or so they could travel incognito? We still don’t know what they were researching in this place.”] BD-1 taps his foot against the metal. A mournful creak rises in response.

“They don’t seem very well maintained.”

BD-1 shines his torch to the side. [“That one’s in about six different parts.”]

“There’s also a stalactite through the middle of it,” Rey replies dryly, glaring at the rock. She pauses. “Or is it a stalagmite?”

[“The first one. Stalagmites come up out of the ground.”]

They’re whispering. Rey has no idea why. The mountain is silent even here, muffling the whispers flying back and forth, sluggish in their despair. They were so close. _So_ close. She wonders how many of them died looking for the same thing Ivano never found. Peace. Security. Home.

She wants to yell. She wants to _scream_. Years of work amounting to a bled kyber crystal she can’t use and can’t help, and just more scrap. As if Jakku could ever contain something that wasn’t dying already. The unfairness of it all surges up and out before she can stop it. A trumpet call. A firing squad. A last, useless cry into the dark expanse that awaits because she’s _here_ , she _exists_ , and now she’s—

“Nothing,” Rey says. “There’s nothing here. We came all this way and there’s _nothing_.”

She pulls into herself, curls right down, because if she doesn’t she thinks she might explode, rip apart and scatter away, remade into something monstrous. The kyber crystal vibrates at her back, that stupid wailing starting up again like some _stupid_ crystal has anything to worry about it, has anything that _matters_ , searing scarlet on her shoulder, in her neck, in everything that’s ever made her hurt and keep on hurting.

“Fuck this,” she whispers, and for a second, for half a heartbeat, she actually thinks she means it. “Fuck this whole stupid galaxy.”

A feather touch of sensation. Body warmed. Flickering like a thunderstorm. She raises her head from where its buried in her knees and looks helplessly at BD-1, all that fury collapsing under the crumbling foundation of shame housing it. She tried. She _tried_.

But that doesn’t mean much of anything when you’ve always been nothing.

And then—

And then.

And then the voice. The first voice she remembers. The first thing to mean anything at all.

_Look._

She jerks her head around, staring into the inky depths of the hangar. Towards the section the rockfall has largely left alone.

[“My Rey?”]

“What…” She rubs at her eyes. “What’s that over there?”

BD-1 point the torch over and takes a few hesitant steps before looking back. Rey swallows, squeezes her knees between her hands just to feel the pull in her muscles, and gets up and follows.

There’s no circle of light, no herald for its presence. It’s shoved right up against the hangar wall, two thin wings extending from the body, cockpit safely encased in transparisteel, engines fitted—even if their configuration is old enough it takes Rey a moment to recognise their parts. It’s smeared in grime and dust, the paint faded and peeling, but the few nicks along its hull are superficial. Inconsequential. Rey doesn’t speak. Doesn’t dare try to make it real. She climbs up to the cockpit, movements indistinct to her own eyes. It’s sealed. She pries the Force underneath and hauls it open. Inside looks exactly like the simulations.

BD-1 trembles against her leg. Not fear. Never fear. He stays by the cockpit as Rey slides to the floor and digs into her backpack, briefly touching the crystal in apology—receiving surprised silence in response. She doesn’t have time to work through the intricacies of that. She pulls out the power cells instead. X-Wing class. More advanced than this ship, but still compatible. The access panels take a bit more prying, but she gets them open and carefully slides the cells home, marvelling at the feel of placing them where they were meant to go.

She returns to BD-1. Touches his head. He gives her a nod. And she leans in and flicks the switches on.

She’s so surprised it lights up she nearly falls of the fucking thing when it starts _screeching at her._

BD-1 screeches back, which _really doesn’t help_ , and Rey’s too busy clamping her hands over her ears as high, delirious laughter ricochets inside her head. It’s the shock that keeps her stationary. She’s never heard the voice do anything but whisper or cry or yell in six years. Manic it might be, it’s still _joyous._

It takes a long time before she realises the echoes she’s hearing is _her own_ laughter.

“Oh my god,” she says breathlessly, then again, “Oh my god.”

It works. It’s warning about fuel intake, faulty wiring, failing systems, all manner of upkeep, but the fact is, it _works_.

—

A Z-95 Headhunter. Outdated even when it was released, but still used for decades by all manner of pilots, and more than enough to reach the stars. Rey takes careful note of the warnings, is pleased to find a retrofitted hyperdrive, calls up everything she can remember Ivano teaching her about starships, and the rest is just a matter of doing it. The real problem isn’t the Z-95 at all.

_You need more than fuel and star metal to fly._

Ivano had been talking about hope.

A runway is pretty fucking important too.

Rey loops around the hangar, the thrill of her find leaking into the Force around her, drawing her into the curious attention of the mountain. It guides her hands along the walls. Shows the orchestrated collapse. A landslide rather than an explosion. Charges dug in and set to detonate in just the right way. The rest of the ruin belongs to time’s indomitable pull, relentlessly providing wear in a space the elements are unable to tread.

“Ivano said there was a gap they flew through,” she says slowly, taking in the expanse of collapsed rock. It’s ridged, weighted, outcroppings crowding in around it. “It’s heavy, but it might not be very thick. We’re still above ground level, right?”

[“Approximately 386.6 metres,”] BD-1 calls back, happily leaping over rocks and starfighters, his shadow looming impossibly large in the beam of the Z-95’s light.

Rey hums thoughtfully and rocks back and forth on her heels. “If we climbed around from the outside, do you think you could use your map to guide us here? I’d rather try and start making a way through from the outside.”

[“I could.”] He stops, balancing precariously on one leg atop a stalagmite. Rey nudges him back on course. [“It’s very late, though.”]

“It’ll take us ages to climb back out and get back to the AT-AT.” She rubs at her shoulder again. It’s been steadily aching ever since the mixed adrenaline of fury and elation wore off. Her body’s still trying to work out what to do with it all. So is her mind. Not the safest way to travel across the desert in the dark. “I guess we could stay here? It’s warm enough.”

BD-1 thinks over that for a moment. [“I’m happy to stay with my Rey.”]

Rey grins. “May as well get started on the Z-95 then. No point in opening up the sky if we can’t fly into it afterwards.”

Her droid exacts a flying leap back to her side, cushioned by the Force. Rey really needs to stop encouraging that. He eyes the starfighter distrustfully—apparently still not over the fact two things have introduced themselves by screaming at Rey today—then fixes her with one of his _looks_. [“Alright. But you need to eat first.”]

On cue, her stomach decides it’s quite done being nauseous and loudly demands attention. She can’t really argue with that.

It’s the same boring, bland meal as always, but it does wonders for her energy, and eating finally gives her brain a welcome break from the constant, contrasting switch of sensory deprivation to sensory overload. Her mental shields are in tatters by now, so she spends the meal bolstering them, sinking into the familiar trance eating provides. Somewhere behind her, BD-1 is delving in and out of starships, little beeps and taps of feet keeping his position obvious.

(Deeper than she’s ever been before, something else is calling. Distant. Patient. Waiting.

Hiding in the dark down below.)

Rey twitches. Pauses chewing. But the presence is gone, nothing more than a glancing thought passing through the way most thoughts do. She’s spent enough time in this place avoiding old ghosts. So she shrugs to herself, stuffs the last of her dinner in her mouth, and goes to find what she needs.

—

_My Rey does not like this place. Neither do I._

_But we have been on this planet for so long, and I want us both to finally go home._

_So I do not tell her what I saw._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy. We're getting there lads.
> 
> Tired as all heck so I'm gonna leave you as it is. Thanks as always for the comments and kudos (almost to 100!). Drop another if you've got the time.
> 
> Oh, also I made a writing blog which you can find [ here.](https://kitswritingden.tumblr.com/) Hmu if you ever wanna chat.
> 
> Stay safe :)


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